Date: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Crime & mystery
Description: What is the connection between the moon-worshipping cult in London's West End, and he mysterious deaths of moon astronomers in Germany, the USA, Greenwich, and Wales? How an an astronomer die while observing the moon through a telescope, and be left with an eerily silvered skin? A brisk novel by British pulp author William J Makin (1893-1944)

THE SILVER ASSASSIN

William J Makin

1937

Contents

1. Full Moon

2: Space Time

3: The Moon Fades

4: Eclipse

5: The Great Equatoria

6: The Moon Goddess

7: Cosmic Power

8 : Death In The Moon

9:  Journeys End In...

________________________

1. Full Moon

THE SERIOUS-FACED, sandy-haired man at the head of the table raised his goblet of liqueur.

"Your very good health, gentlemen!"

A murmuring response rose at the long table beneath the shaded pink lights.

"Your health, Allister!"

"Delighted to be here!"

"Always a pleasure!"

Almost in unison the six guests raised their goblets and sipped the Napoleon brandy with evident appreciation.

Although the scene was a luxuriously furnished dining-room overlooking the discreet Berkeley Square, none of the six guests had the appearance of a Mayfair idler. In fact, two bald heads, a tousled mop of hair, and a straggling beard, combined with old-fashioned and, in some cases, green-edged dinner jackets, suggested men with serious ideas of life.

They were all astronomers, and nearly all professors, Their feet might shuffle carelessly the dust of this earth, but their eyes and minds explored the dust of the stars. The possessor of the straggling beard was the famous Dr. Heinmesch, of Zurich. It was his watery blue eyes that had first peered into that chaos of cosmos, the Milky Way. He had mapped and catalogued it with a completeness that had earned the admiration of at least ten brother astronomers who could grapple with his system.

The taut, liverish face of an American guest, Edwin Kyne, took on a glow as the brandy eased down his throat. One of the distinguished astronomers who lived and worked in the Mount Wilson observatory perched 6,000 feet on a Californian mountain, he came down from those sunshine heights rather like a marauding tiger when new theories were being argued. As an old-fashioned scientist of the New World, he believed in tearing, rending and thoroughly destroying the new fangled theories of Old World astronomers.

Even now he was purring in devastating fashion to his neighbour.

"A universe that is exploding!" He almost exploded himself: "Believe me, Eddington has lost himself. If he argues that the universe is rushing away at a colossal rate from its own solar system, I reply that it is just bad mathematics. Just bad mathematics."

He liked to repeat a phrase, to emphasise his dogmatism. His neighbour, a dark, youthful member of the party, took the remark with graceful ease.

"Perhaps you agree with Eliot," he replied, "that the world ends 'not with a bang, but a whimper?'"

"Who is Eliot? I can't say I recall him as an astronomer."

"He isn't an astronomer. Just a poet," smiled the young man.

The American took another sip of brandy.

"I'm talking astronomy," he said.

The young man sighed.

"At least none of us will be alive to check Eddington's theory," he ventured. "D'you remember what Sherlock Holmes replied to Dr. Watson after that obtuse individual had explained exactly how many million miles we are away from the sun? He said: 'I'm glad to hear it, Watson. I'll do my best to forget it.' That's how I felt after hearing Eddington explain his theory of an expanding universe."

''I never read thrillers," said the American, severely. "I haven't the time."

The dark-haired young man shook his head.

"But what a lot you've missed! It was reading fiction that led me into astronomy. Now a book on astronomy is my favourite form of thriller."

The American grunted.

"That sounds a flippant remark, my young friend. By the way, I didn't catch your name when we were introduced."

"Bretherton― John Bretherton," smiled the other. "I'm at Oxford. A don, you know."

"I might have guessed it from your accent. Your accent," nodded Kyne.

Bretherton was not disturbed.

"We produce motor cars also at Oxford," he said, easily.

The American lowered his voice.

"Well. sir, you seem to know everybody here. Maybe you can tell me about our host."

"Phillip Allister?"

The American nodded.

"Yes. You see I'm just here on a visit. I was pleasantly surprised to receive an invitation to this party. But, up to now. I've not been able to get it right. Who is Phillip Allister, anyway?"

The young man sighed, drained his goblet, and glanced enviously at the luxurious room and the table with its gleaming silver.

"All that one need know is that he is a millionaire," he said. "A rich playboy of science, if you will."

"Meaning. that he dabbles in astronomy as a hobby? As a hobby?"

"I think it is a little more serious than that. Allister must have spent forty thousand pounds on his private observatory alone."

"Two hundred thousand dollars!" The American was impressed. "Where is it ?"

The young man jerked his thumb towards the ceiling.

"On the roof of this house. An observatory in the middle of Mayfair. You'll see it later."

Kyne, with the help of brandy, reflected interest.

"Say, that's great! Has he specialised in any particular nebula or group of stars? Any particular one?'

Bretherton nodded.

"Out of the billions that shine in the sky above us, he has chosen the most spectacular to the eye at night― the moon."

The American dropped to earth.

''That's a pity," his voice purred dangerously again. "The moon is dead. Volcanic ash and craters. Dead, I tell you."'

The quiet, tired voice of their host drawled from the top of the table.

"I don't agree with you, Kyne. And I hope to make you change your opinion before this evening is concluded."

Despite the quiet tone, the sandy-haired Allister revealed a queer gleam in his neutral eyes.

But the tiger was now roused in Kyne. He stretched out a sun browned paw on the table.

"I consider astronomy has gone far beyond the moon," he challenged. "It was an excellent and, I daresay, excising study for the Babylonians who were more interested in astrology than astronomy. But the best scientists decided long ago that the moon was dead, and so now we can leave this dead world to its cosmic decay and explore the mighty universe beyond. The moon is dead."

"But even a dead dog breeds maggots," laughed the young man at his side.

The tiger turned to spring.

"I'm an astronomer," went on the serious-faced Philip Allister, "our young friend, in his usual flippant fashion has raised a point that is worth discussing. Is there life on the moon?"

"The moon is a dead stone in the sky." repeated Kyne, doggedly.

"A stone, yes," went on the host, "but also dynamic. Let us think of it as radium of phosphorous coagulated upon a vivid pole of energy."

"That sounds to me like philosophic nonsense. Certainly not practical astronomy. Not practical astronomy." clawed Kyne.

"Haf you der mathematics, der figures and formula, Herr Allister?" asked the Zurich savant, ponderously.

"I have more." said Allister, a flush creeping across his colourless face. "I have a telescope focussed on the moon at this moment. On the moon at the full. You shall see for yourselves "

A firm, sinewy hand rested for a moment on his arm. checking the excitement of the outburst. The possessor of that hand, a heavily built, grey haired individual, sat on his right. The touch sobered Allister.

"Thank you, Professor Carr," he said, quietly. "I was forgetting in my enthusiasm. It needs yet another half hour to full moon."

He signalled the butler, who began circling the table again with that excellent Napoleon brandy.

"So that's the famous Edward Carr of Oxford!" muttered the American, with interest.

His neighbour nodded, glancing at that face with the heavy, determined jaw. the bushy eyebrows and the sardonic twist of the full lips.

"Yes, our show astronomy professor at Oxford," agreed Bretherton. "Ambitious. A glutton for work. Author six text books. Owns a powerful racing car. A queer mixture."

"The best astronomer in Europe." conceded Kyne. "Sound― very sound".

AMIDST the rich incense of glowing cigars, the huge bulk of Professor Carr raised, itself, Titan-like. There was a slight suggestion of theatricality in the black velvet dinner-jacket he affected, but everyone in that dining-room overlooking Berkeley Square knew him to be a brilliant and yet precise scientist.

"I daresay most of us here," he began, in his vibrant voice, "will consider this excellent dinner and wine a somewhat unorthodox introduction to a new astronomical theory."

"No, no," said Bretherton, sipping his liqueur.

Professor Carr ignored him.

"Our host and friend, Mr. Philip Allister. has, however, his own unusual and expensive methods of giving his astronomical theories to the world of science. I understand that for many months he has been studying secretly a certain section of the moons surface only visible for a few fleeting seconds at full moon to the most powerful telescopes. Let me say at once that I know nothing of these studies. Even to his closest friends, his scientific friends, Allister has disclosed nothing."

He smiled benevolently upon his host.

"I had to be certain," said Allister in that tired, quiet voice.

"Well, whatever the secret of the moon, whatever unique theory Allister has prepared, you, gentlemen― the leading astronomers of Europe and America, have been called here to-night to have it expounded to you. I will, myself, make only one observation for the moment. I strongly suspect that we are to be shown something of that mystery crater of the moon. Eratosthenes. Have I guessed correctly, Allister?"

He flicked the ash from his cigar, and turned a sardonic smile to the host. Hunched in his chair, and giving the impression of hugging a great secret tightly to himself, Phillip Allister muttered:

"You will see... you will see."

"The Gardens of Eratosthenes.

That's what Dr. Pickering called them," quavered a bald head among the guests. "Wasn't there some talk of fungi growing there?"

Professor Carr nodded.

"Some of our colleagues become a little dazzled when they gaze at the bright moon," he murmured. "Pickering may consider Eratosthenes a crater of life. Some of us may consider it the crater of death."

And in the sudden quietude that followed his remark he sat down.

"That's right,'' said Edwin Kyne, aloud. "Professor Carr is right. I knew Mayer of New York who was found dead at his telescope last year. A queer business. Mayer was supposed to have been concentrating on the crater of Eratosthenes. Then, one morning, his assistants found him dead in the observatory. A silver pallor on his face. Yes, Professor Carr is right."

'Ach! It is... what you say... a coincidence," growled Dr. Heinmesch. "Was it not der same crater,  was Eratosthenes, that poor Engels was himself looking at when, Himmel, a bomb exploded in the observatory at Jena? Der Teufel! I tank Communists were at work dere. Ja!"

And he puffed furiously at his cigar, enveloping his angry face in a smoke screen.

"Gentlemen," smiled Professor Carr. Do not let us be led away from scientific discussion by these unfortunate happenings."

"Yes, it is queer," said Bretherton, in a quiet tone that hushed everyone. "It is only three months ago that a young assistant at Cambridge― Stanmore was his name―was found dead at the telescope. There was a suggestion that he had poisoned himself. Overwork, and all that sort of thing."

"What of it?" blurted Phillip Allister, suddenly.

Bretherton seemed to regard him without seeing.

"Nothing, except that-except I happened to know that he had been studying the crater of Eratosthenes." he replied, lamely.

"Professor Carr is right. It's a crater of death," repeated the American, doggedly.

"And I tell you that it is a crater of life," shouted Allister, rising abruptly in his chair. He almost upset his goblet of brandy as he jerked himself to his feet. Mechanically Dr. Carr put out a hand to steady it.

His eyes were gleaming as he faced the guests.

"Gentlemen, I invited you here tonight because each one of you is an expert. What I have to reveal to you can only be appreciated by experts. I have been closely studying the landscape of the moon for three years. In the beginning I thought as most of you still think, that the moon was dead, that the lunar landscape and atmosphere, its alternating periods of intense heat and intense cold, could not by any means support life. But, slowly, surely, there came the realisation that we were all wrong."

"I must der figures see,'" muttered Heinmesch.

"Maybe you've taken photographs?" suggested Kyne.

"As yet, no," replied Allister. "For I have seen all I want to see with my eye at the telescope. And the time has now arrived when you shall see what I have seen. Until that moment, discussion is futile."

"Futile, I agree." repeated Kyne. "Not that I question your observations, Allister," he went on quickly. "But they may savour of a― shall I say― romantic fiction?"

"Der man in der moon," chuckled Heinmesch. "Wells― Verne― and what's dat French writer― Maurois?"

"Men have cried for the moon," said young Bretherton, seriously.

"And they are still crying for it." declared Kyne, turning upon him tigerishly. "There are even men in my country who actually discuss the possibilities of travelling to the moon by rocket. 'The first explorers in space,' so they call themselves. I always imagined the first duty of an explorer was to acquaint himself with the conditions of the terrain which he was about to penetrate."

"A quarter of a million miles away," nodded Professor Carr sagely. "and continuous rain from millions of meteors."

"You have expressed it as it should be expressed, Professor Carr," said the American, "it is only necessary for me to add that the moon has been observed night after night, year after year, for centuries. And no one has ever seen a trace of life."

"And the fungi in the crater of Eratosthenes which Pickering asserts is to be found there?" queried the man with the bald head.

The American shrugged his shoulders.

"If you are particularly anxious to have fungi on the moon I will concede it. I will concede it."

"Then if fungi, why not life in a higher form?" almost shouted Allister.

Kyne almost leaped from his chair. "Because in this 'mysterious universe,' as an eminent scientist has so dramatically described it, the human brain is the only real intelligence we know."

"Bravo!" laughed Bretherton. "At least someone believes in the human worm."

"Gentlemen... gentlemen,'' said Professor Carr, shaking his grey head and raising his huge bulk again, "there is a good deal of nonsense being talked here to-night. I think, my dear Allister, it is due to your very excellent brandy," he smiled, draining his goblet, at a gulp. "Let us forget this talk of death... those dear colleagues of ours... Let us think rather of "

"Life!" ejaculated Allister, rising with his glass in hand. "Gentlemen, I give you a toast― life in the moon!"

"Madness.... moon madness," whispered the American, rising reluctantly.

In somewhat shamefaced manner they all lifted their goblets. Phillip Allister drained his at one gulp, and with a savage laugh turned and flung it into the blazing fire behind him.

It was smashed into fragments. The flames licked them, greedily.

"A little theatrical, my dear Allister," protested Carr, a smile on his lips.

At the same time he drained his own glass. The others did likewise.

Allister turned his face to Carr.

''What time do you make it now ?"

The Oxford savant dived a huge paw within his velvet jacket and brought forth an old-fashioned chronometer―

"It is exactly fourteen minutes past nine," he said.

"Greenwich mean time," nodded the American who had checked it with his own watch.

The host smiled triumphantly at his six guests.

"At thirty-one minutes past nine you will be able to see into the crate of Eratosthenes. For the space of twenty minutes the shadows in that crater will be eliminated. And you shall see―"

"What we shall see," nodded Carr, with a smile. He linked his arm in that of his host's. "Come along, Allister. I suppose your observatory awaits us."

"Everything is prepared," said Allister, solemnly.

The chairs scraped the highly polished floor as the guests moved away from the table.

ASCENDING the stairs and entering that doomed room on the top of the house in Berkeley Square, Edwin Kyne drew in a quick breath of surprise.

Accustomed as he was to the highly efficient and modernised Mount Wilson observatory of California, the American had to admit that the room he now entered was one of the best he had seen since he arrived in Europe

True, the 25-inch telescope poised like a howitzer could not compare with the great 100-inch telescope at Mount Wilson. But the new, shining equipment, the expensive elaborations, the chromium fittings and the glistening cleanliness suggestive rather of a hospital operating theatre, revealed that the millionaire, Phillip Allister, took his astronomical play very seriously.

"Say, but this is great!" he said, aloud.

"Are we all here, now ?" asked Allister, impatiently.

Prof. Carr glanced round the chamber that reflected in its steel fittings the light from two dangling electric lamps.

"Where is our young friend, Bretherton ?" he asked.

"Here I am," said the dark haired don, emerging into the light. "I couldn't resist taking a peep from your roof, Allister, at that lighted trench they call Piccadilly."

"I begin to suspect that our young friend is more interested in the bright lights of Mayfair than in the light of the Milky Way," said the American, resuming his tigerish manner.

Bretherton smiled easily.

"At least, down there is life, humanity, warm blood," he retorted. "While up there..."

He lifted his eyes and shrugged his shoulders.

"You think it cold, empty, and dead, eh?" took up Allister excitedly. "Well, prepare for a shock, my young friend."

With the cautious passion of a research worker, he closed the door and turned the key. Then he crossed to the wall and snicked a switch. A motor began to hum. That gentle, sonorous noise seemed to impregnate the whole shining observatory. The steel seemed to shiver with life. The walls watched.

Moving in quick, jerky fashion, Allister crossed to the other wall. He moved a lever against an indicator. A slight rumbling was heard overhead. Instinctively, the six guests looked up. The dome was splitting, revealing the night sky tinged ruddy from the glow of London's West End.

Snouting towards the opening was the huge 25-inch telescope poised like a projectile against its steel cradle

"Any adjustments necessary?" came the calm query of Professor Carr.

"None― none," whispered Allister. His thin, lean frame seemed to be quivering with the excitement of the moment. "I prepared the position of the telescope some hours ago. It should be almost correct. Allow me―"

He stretched himself on the low, bent couch that straddled the floor against the eyepiece of the telescope.

"The time is now exactly twenty-four minutes past nine," said Professor Carr, standing, chronometer in hand.

"Only seven more minutes!" A queer spasm seemed to distort the face of the millionaire astronomer for a second as he made the remark. Then he passed, and he pressed his eye to the telescope.

The six guests stood tense in queer attitudes in that shining observatory on the roof of the house. Despite the scepticism of their remarks at the dinner-table the atmosphere now impressed them. They were about to peer into that "mysterious universe" with its millions of worlds, its bodies moving through space time with a mathematical certainty.

A sigh, which might have been of contentment, escaped the prone figure on the mattress.

"Excellent!" With reluctance he seemed to drag his face away from the telescope to regard his six guests, straddling in their tense attitude over him.

"The switch against the wall, just at your elbow. Professor Carr. It controls both lights. Do you mind ? I would prefer complete darkness."

"Is it not possible, Herr Allister, to take notes?" troubled the savant from Zurich.

"Later― later, Herr Heinmesch," replied Allister.

"But der time― der clock―"

"There is a sidereal clock facing you― luminous dial. Now, if you please. Professor Carr!"

A click, and darkness fell like an enveloping cloak over the observatory. The sudden transition was startling. Even the American impulsively stretched out his hand.

They stood there, these six worshippers of the heavens, waiting with the religious expectancy of those who anticipate a revelation. Slowly, something took shape in the darkness. It gleamed. It was the luminous sidereal clock.

"The time, please "

It was a whisper from the prone man. The calm, precise voice of Carr replied.

"Twenty-eight minutes past nine."

Another sigh in the darkness. The heavy, laboured breathing as of a man in a deep sleep came from Dr. Heinmesch. There was a wheezy, nostril whistle from a bald-headed savant. As for Bretherton, he felt himself holding his breath, his body shaken by the thumping of his heart. Allister, from his couch, was speaking in the distant, dreamy manner of a man whose spirit was lost in that vast immensity above him.

"The area on which the telescope is trained is well known to you, gentlemen. It is a section of northern half of the moon. A slight adjustment-Excellent! I am now looking directly at the Mare lmbrium. A range of mountains which bound it to the south-east is the Apennines. Yes. they are beautifully clear to-night."

"Twenty-nine minutes past!" came a vibrant voice from the darkness.

"The Apennines. There, gentlemen. At the southern extremity is the vast crater― Eratosthenes!"

The name came in a triumphant shout. Bretherton sensed his heart pounding madly.

"Thirty minutes past nine!"

The voice of the prone man seemed to be half-strangled with excitement.

"The crater is magnificently clear. The shadows are going. Now! It is― alive―"

That last word came with an expiring sigh.

Silence followed. A tense silence. In the darkness each of the six guests seemed rooted. It was all so intangible, so much like drowning in darkness that Bretherton stretched out a hand to clutch something real. His fingers groped in nothingness.

"Thirty-one minutes past nine! Tell us what you see, Allister?"

It was a vibrant challenge out of the blackness. But there was no reply.

"Is there life there, Allister?"

The man on the couch made no reply. Only the motor hummed Interminably.

"Herr Allister?"

"Allister!"

"Man. Can you hear?"

It was the American who bent down to him, groped with his hand, and touched.

"The lights! Quick! For God's sake!"

A click, and the two electric lamps blazed forth at the touch of Professor Carr. Instinctively, the six guests swivelled their gaze to the figure on the mattress.

No longer was the millionaire couched in the comfortable posture of an observer of the moon. His lean form was doubled in an agonising fashion. His hands were twisted. And the patent-leather evening shoes were pointed in dumb fashion to the night sky.

But it was the face of the man lying on the couch at which the guests stared in horrified silence. Twisted with pain, the neutral eyes wide open, it was now tinged with a ghastly silver pallor.

Once again hesitantly, the American stretched forth his hand. He pulled open the stiff shirt front and felt for the heart. His own amazed eyes turned towards the watchers.

"He's dead!" he muttered.

2: Space Time

BENEATH THE changing electric lights which swung gently in the breeze from the open dome, the shadows of the six guests jerked uneasily.

It was Professor Carr's voice that brought them into action.

"Someone 'phone for a doctor!" he commanded, striding towards the silver-faced body that lay twisted on the couch.

Edwin Kyne went to the door. It was locked, but the key was there. He turned it, and the patter of his excited feet as he trotted downstairs could be heard.

Glancing up from the body, Professor Carr met the keen-eyed gaze of the young Oxford don.

"Is― is he really dead?" asked Bretherton, in an awed whisper.

Carr nodded.

"I'm afraid there's no doubt of It. Probably a sudden heart seizure― the excitement of the moment being too; much for him. He seemed to me to be in an almost hysterical mood at the dinner table."

Bretherton could not tear his gaze away from that face with the staring eyes.

"Of course, you see it?" he asked.

"What?"

"That ghastly, dead colour― silver. Almost as though the moonlight had blasted him to death. And that strange talk at the dinner table when we discussed the men who had died during their explorations of the crater Eratosthenes. Queer, isn't it?"

"You're talking nonsense, Bretherton," said Carr. quietly.

"Does the moon kill?" asked Bretherton, in an awed monotone. The other guests seemed to regard him with suspicion. "Were the other deaths merely accidents? Coincidences might become awful certainties."

Dr. Heinmesch, of Zurich, gave an uneasy laugh.

"It is not der talk of a scientist," he said.

"Quite right, Heinmesch," nodded Professor Carr, approvingly. He turned to the young man. "Pull yourself together, Bretherton. Every one of us is doomed to die, and it is just unfortunate that Allister should die at the moment when we were gathered around him."

"But it is significant that he should die just when he was about to reveal something to us,'' persisted Bretherton.

The Oxford professor shrugged his broad shoulders.

"There may have been some revelation, although, personally, I doubt it." He quoted, softly. "De mortuis nil nisi bonum. Allister was indulging in an obsession, a maggot in his brain that, persuaded him life existed somewhere on that dead surface of the moon."

"Ja! It was der moon madness," nodded Heinmesch. "I saw it in his eyes when he talked at the dinner table. It afflicts many who dabble in matters for which dey haf not, er, scientific training."

"I don't agree with you," muttered Bretherton, stubbornly. He was still gazing in horrified fashion at the body.

"Der is danger in too vivid imagination," went on Heinmesch, quietly. "Astronomers who peer into the heavens must remember to keep their feet firmly planted on the earth. Also, dey must cling to der mathematics. Herr Allister admitted that of figures to prove his theory he had none."

''Because he claimed that we could see through the telescope what he could see," pointed out Bretherton.

It was at that moment that Professor Carr fished the chronometer out of his pocket. He nodded his grey head sagely over it.

"There is still time to prove this extraordinary theory," he said. "You may recall that. Allister said that the shadows in the crater of Eratosthenes would be eliminated for 20 minutes. It is now exactly a quarter to ten. For six minutes we have the opportunity of looking through this telescope and seeing what Allister saw just before he died."

A silence fell upon the guests. They gazed in slightly scared fashion at that telescope which still nosed towards tho heavens. And they gazed also upon the dead man who had claimed to see life through that same telescope.

"I think it is not time for astronomical studies," said Heinmesch. "What we need is a doctor."

"He's coming over at once," said a voice from the doorway. The American, Edwin Kyne had re-appeared. After closing the door he also looked towards the body as if to assure himself that the dreadful happening had been real.

"There is only five minutes left," growled Professor Carr. "I would recall to you, gentlemen, that we were brought here to witness something remarkable happening on the moon's surface. Is anyone tempted to take poor Allister's place?"

There was a slightly challenging smile on the heavy intellectual face. It caused the other astronomers to shuffle their feet uneasily. There was no response.

"Then I must decide in the interests of science," murmured Carr. "I will look through the telescope. Perhaps you will oblige me, Bretherton, by pushing that couch over from the corner of the room and placing it alongside... here!"

And he stabbed a finger in the direction of the twisted body.

Bretherton hesitated.

"Do you really think this is in order, Carr?" he asked. "The circumstances of the death, and―"

"Allister declared that we could see life," said Carr, roughly. "As a scientist. I am interested in examining his theory. But maybe your nerves are rather shattered," he added, with a touch of sarcasm. "Otherwise, you might 'have volunteered to look for yourself."

The Oxford don set his jaw.

"I will," he replied, surprisingly, "As soon as you have finished your own observations, Carr."

And he walked over to the spare couch, carried it easily across the floor and placed it alongside that on which lay the body of Allister.

With calm assurance, and unconcern. Professor Carr settled himself on the couch. He stretched out his burly limbs in an easy posture, ignoring the wide-eyed, silver face within a few inches of him.

"And now the lights, please," he commanded.

"Excuse me, one moment, Professor," blurted the American, who had watched these preparations with growing alarm. "Don't you think that we― that is you― are taking a terrible risk? Terrible risk."

"Time is precious," said the Professor, ignoring him. "Off with the lights, Bretherton."

A click came, and once again the observatory was plunged into darkness. The luminous dial of the sidereal clock came swimming out of the blackness, giving to the American the impression that a grinning death mask was observing the proceedings. He shivered.

For a few seconds there was silence. Then the vibrant voice of Professor Carr sounded, calm and assured.

"Yes, everything is perfectly clear," the professor was saying. "The telescope is focussed directly on the crater of Eratosthenes. The shadows are still eliminated―  Ah.!"

Bretherton, his hand still against the cool reality of the electric light switch, asked aloud:

"Do you see anything Carr?" There was no reply.

"Carr! Speak. Do you see anything?"

Still silence.

"The lights, for heaven's sake!" called out the American.

Bretherton flicked them on. The professor was still lying alongside the body of Allister. Instinctively, the others bent over him.

With a sigh of relief, they saw the burly figure in the velvet dinner jacket slowly remove his face from the eyepiece of the telescope and look up into their own.

"You're all right, professor?" gasped the American.

Carr smiled.

"Of course I'm right."

"And did you see anything of the crater?"

"I saw nothing."

He stretched himself lazily. He half sat up. He discovered young Bretherton regarding him.

"Well, my young friend?"

"I'm waiting," said Bretherton, quietly.

"For what?"

"To look for myself."

Professor Carr sighed..

"I had forgotten." He rose and once again consulted his chronometer. "Is it worth it, Bretherton? There is less than a minute before the shadows begin."

Bretherton settled himself on the couch.

"The lights please," he nodded.

With a shrug of his shoulders, Carr obliged. Again the observatory was plunged into darkness. A deep silence, fretted by the heavy breathing of the group of men and an occasion,., shuffle of feet, filled the domed room.

A minute passed. Still no response from the watcher alongside the body. Two minutes passed. The silence became unbearable. The American was about to open his mouth to speak, but instead of words a sob of fear broke forth.

A loud knocking sounded on the door. It was repeated and resounded in that darkened room. To one man in that blackness it recalled the tragic knocking in "Macbeth," when murder had been done in the Scottish castle.

Professor Carr did not hesitate. He clicked the light. Again all eyes were turned to the man at the eyepiece of the telescope.

Bretherton drew his face away and blinked. He passed a thin hand wearily over his eyes.

"Well?" queried Professor Carr, approaching.

Bretherton gazed up at that face with its stamp of arrogant intellectuality.

"Nothing," he said, briefly, and rose. Once again that knocking was repeated. Professor Carr nodded to the American, who recovered sufficiently to unlock the door. A stumpy little man in evening-dress was standing there, with the scared butler who had served at the table behind him.

"I'm Doctor Emden," announced the newcomer. "Someone telephoned for me. Said it was urgent."

Professor Carr indicated the body of Phillip Allister.

"I'm afraid you can be of very little use, doctor," he said, sadly. "Our esteemed colleague appears to have suffered a heart attack at the moment when he was making some astronomical observations."

The doctor bent down and placed his hand over the heart. Then he gazed fixedly at the distorted face which still retained its peculiar silver sheen. He considered it for a few moments. Then he put his fingers lightly against the dead man's lips.

He straightened himself up, And stood up. He appeared to be considering something.

"Well, doctor?" asked Carr, a little impatiently.

The doctor looked at him, but made no reply. His eyes searched the little group of men. He saw the butler, still standing in the doorway. He crooked his finger at him.

"Yes, sir?"

"Telephone Vine Street Police Station and ask them to send an inspector round at once!"

"Yes, sir."

More scared than ever, the butler began to descend the stairs.

The six guests stared stupidly at each other. Once again Professor Carr acted as their spokesman.

"My dear sir," he protested, addressing the doctor, "is this necessary?"

The stumpy little man nodded.

"I'm afraid it is. You see, this gentleman has been poisoned."

"Poisoned!" The American repeated the word with a little shiver.

WITHIN the next two hours the theorists of the immense universe were introduced to an entirely new world. It was the world of the police as represented by two detectives and three constables..

Much to their surprise and irritation, the six astronomers found themselves being questioned and cross-examined regarding the mundane matters of the evening. When, unconsciously, they attempted to lift the conversation with the two detectives into the higher and more exciting realms of astronomy, they were politely but firmly brought back to earth.

John Bretherton eventually found himself ushered into a room where the two detectives were seated at a table, conning well-thumbed notebooks. One of them, who had introduced himself as Detective-Inspector Graves, looked up as he entered. His ferret-like face with keen grey I eyes beneath bushy eyebrows, regarded him shrewdly.

"Bretherton... John Bretherton," he murmured, glancing at a page in his note-book. "From Oxford, eh?"

Bretherton nodded.

"And your address?" asked the detective.

"I have a flat, just off the High. My sister, Jill, lives with me and looks after things."

He gave the address, which was laboriously entered in the notebook.

"And now, Mr. Bretherton," said Detective-Inspector Graves, leaning back in his chair with the air of a man who wishes to indulge in a familiar chat, "perhaps you can tell us something about the... er... deceased."

Bretherton shrugged his shoulders. "Very little, I'm afraid. I've known him for the past two years, but I don't suppose we've met more than four or five times. And then it was just to talk."

"What about?"

"Astronomy, chiefly. It was a hobby of his."

"So I understand," nodded the detective. "In fact, someone has suggested that he was crazy about it."

"He certainly had developed some strange theories," said Bretherton, cautiously.

"Would you agree that he was crazy in any other direction?"

"I'm afraid I don't understand. I haven't said he was crazy about astronomy―"

"Let us forget astronomy for the moment," said the detective, bluntly. "Did Phillip Allister suggest to you the type of man who would take his own life?"

Bretherton shook his head.

"Not in the least. He enjoyed the good things of life that his money could buy for him. He had good taste in wine and food."

"And women?"

"He appeared indifferent to them, the one passion in his life was astronomy."

The detective frowned as this inevitable subject was again introduced.

"Have you ever dined here before to-night?"

Bretherton nodded.

"Six months ago. Allister asked me to come and see his new observatory that he had built at the top of the house."

"And you spent a pleasant evening?"

"Very pleasant."

"And inspected the observatory?"

"I congratulated him on possessing one of the finest in London. I also admired the view over Mayfair from the gallery that surrounds it."

"As you did this evening." nodded the detective, glancing at his notes.

"As I did this evening," agreed Bretherton. with a smile.

Inspector Graves gave him another quick glance.

"You were among the six guests invited this evening. Why?"

"Frankly, I didn't know until I arrived here. When I first received the invitation I imagined Allister wanted to talk, as usual, about astronomy. Only at the dinner-table I learn that Allister had a most important astronomical theory to announce. He believed that he had discovered some form of life in the moon."

"Yes, yes," said the detective, testily. "We have heard a good deal about that. Let us leave it at that― a theory."

"But I think it important."

"No doubt."

"And has a bearing on what you asked me at the beginning of this... er... conversation."

The detective regarded him in silence.

"Please explain," he said.

"Allister was convinced that he could prove his theory that life of some kind existed on the moon."

"Well?"

"A man who could prove such a revolutionary theory would be acclaimed among the first astronomers of the day. Providing the theory was correct, all kinds of scientific honours would be heaped upon, him. For a man like Allister it would be heaven on earth."

"Go on."

Bretherton leaned forward.

"Believing he was on the verge of such a triumph, it is extremely unlikely that Allister would take his own life."

Inspector Graves considered the point, and nodded. He gave a glance at his colleague, who also nodded.

"I gather, then, Mr. Bretherton, that you don't believe Allister committed suicide, or that he was even contemplating it."

"He may have been contemplating it. I'm told that most men do at some time of their lives. I've not ignored the problem myself."

''Really?"

"But I'm convinced that Allister had no intention of dying at thirty-one minutes past nine this evening. He had too much at stake. Months of study on the moon and its craters, and―"

"What makes you say that Allister died at thirty-one minutes past nine?" asked the detective.

"It was the time of full moon. And he was telling us what he saw through the telescope."

"All you gentlemen seem very precise about the time," nodded the detective.

"Time is our business. We are astronomers."

"Yes, I believe that,'' sighed Graves. "Well, then, Mr. Bretherton, let us accept your theory. If Allister did not commit suicide, what was it that killed him?"

Bretherton hesitated. He sensed the grey eyes watching him closely.

"How can I say," he countered. "It is always possible that he had a heart attack. A good deal of brandy has been drunk in the course of the evening."

"Yes, I want to discuss the brandy later," said the detective. "In the meantime, let me tell you that Phillip Allister did not die of a heart attack, but of poison. Doctor Emden diagnosed that. It has since been confirmed by the Divisional Surgeon, who is at the moment preparing for an autopsy. Moreover Phillip Allister was only forty years of age, and not subject to heart attacks. The character of the poison is still undecided. But both medical men hazard the opinion that it contained a high percentage of silver nitrate."

Silver nitrate! Bretherton realised that this would explain the peculiar silver pallor that spread over the dead man's face as he lay couched beneath the telescope. At the same moment he was aware that Detective Inspector Graves was quietly thrusting a question at him.

"Do you, by any chance, use silver nitrate in your scientific work, Mr. Bretherton?"

"Of course," he replied, as calmly as he could. "Every astronomer who does photographic work of the stars uses it."

"I may take it then that everyone present at this dinner-party was familiar with the use of silver nitrate?" .

"Including Allister himself," nodded Bretherton.

"Yet we have already agreed upon your theory that this is not a case of suicide. There is only one theory that remains."

"And may I ask what that is?" asked Bretherton, as lightly as he could.

"You may," said the detective sternly, "it is murder, by some person or persons at present unknown."!

The official phraseology came easily from the detective's lips, but to Bretherton who had previously met it only in the fiction that he had earlier laughingly confessed to reading, or in the daily newspaper, it came with a shocking reality.

"Murder!" he faltered.

"I am only taking your own theory to its logical conclusion," pointed out Detective Inspector Graves. "But let us forget theories for the moment and concentrate on facts. Brandy, for example. You admit that a good deal was drunk during the course of the evening?"

Bretherton nodded.

"The liqueur brandy passed round the table at least twice."

"And during dinner?"

"Champagne."

The detective smiled.

"For men who were about to study the heavens, you must have all been in excellent form."

Again Bretherton shrugged his shoulders.

"Allister liked to do his guests well. He could well afford it, and it pleased his vanity."

"I see." The detective seemed to be studiously concentrating on his notes. With head down he asked the next question.

"Do you think it possible that Allister's own glass of champagne could have been poisoned?"

"No," replied Bretherton, readily. "It could easily have been detected in the drinking, and Allister was sufficiently a connoisseur in wine to have suspected the slightest unusual flavour in the champagne.

The detective was regarding him again.

"But as the dinner, and the drinking continued, the palate of the connoisseur would become dulled, eh?"

"Maybe."

"So that when the brandy liqueur was passed round it might have been possible for Allister to be swallowing poison without realising it.'

"He was certainly in an excited mood," pondered Bretherton.

"So much so," went on the detective, "that he smashed his own goblet into the fire after giving a toast.''

"A little theatrical," said Bretherton, mechanically repeating the phrase of Prof. Carr at the incident.

"Not only theatrical, but very awkward for us," agreed the detective. "That one goblet, smashed and burnt in the fire is the only one at the table which we are not able to analyse. Most inconvenient."

"But very convenient for the murderer," said Bretherton. slowly.

"Very," replied the detective, drily. His eyes searched the dark-haired young man closely for a few seconds.

"I think that will do for the present, thank you, Mr. Bretherton."

Bretherton rose. As he reached the door a remark by the detective caused him to swivel round.

"Oh, by the way, Mr. Bretherton. I was forgetting. You made a telephone call from here this evening, didn't you?"

"Yes," replied Bretherton.

"Shortly after the butler had telephoned the police?"

"I daresay it was."

"You dialled the number yourself. May I ask to whom you were telephoning?"

"Don't you know?" smiled the young man for the first time.

"I shouldn't be asking you if I did," snapped Graves.

"I thought it best to warn a friend of mine that I should be late."

"I see. I hope the message got through satisfactorily."

"My friend was out," said Bretherton. "Is that all, inspector?"

"Beyond warning you that it will be necessary for you to attend the inquest― yes."

"Good-night, inspector."

"Good-night."

Graves watched the young man close the door behind him. Then he rubbed his jaw, in characteristic fashion.

"What d'you think of him, Graves?" asked the hitherto silent detective.

"A man with ideas, too many of 'em. Like the rest of these damned scientists. They all seem moonstruck to me."

"D'you think one of them poisoned Allister?"

Inspector Graves considered the point.

"I don't know," he said, slowly. "Each one of them is clever enough to do murder, and get away with it. Or, rather, they think they are."

"What are you going to do, then?"

"Send 'em home," said Graves, decisively. "You can go outside and give them the glad news. And then come back to me. Before morning we've got to find the most suspicious character of all in this affair-the man who was not present at the dinner-party."

"And that is ?"

"Peter Allister― the dead man's stepbrother and now inheritor of the fortune."

"And where do you expect to find him, Graves ?"

"Judging by these many letters demanding money," said Graves grimly, "in a doss-house in the East End."

The other detective nodded, and walked quickly to the door.

WITHIN 15 minutes that strange dinner-party that had ended so tragically was all over. The guests were dispersing.

Professor Edward Carr, who had been champing impatiently at the delay, sighed with relief and knotted a huge woollen muffler about his throat.

"I have my racing-car here, Bretherton," he said. "Would you like a lift back to Oxford?"

"Thanks, but I'm staying the night in town," replied the young man.

"Very well. I'll see you later."

And with a curt nod to the other guests he took his departure.

Edwin Kyne, of the Mount Wilson Observatory, had recovered somewhat from the shattering effects of the evening. He had also just swallowed another brandy and soda offered him by the attentive butler.

"I guess this will be a front-page story in the newspapers to-morrow," he hazarded.

"I have already refused admittance to three newspaper men, sir," said the butler, quietly.

"Bad news travels fast," quavered a bald head, reaching a trembling hand for a hat.

"Well, gentlemen, I must be going," said the American, with alacrity. "Good-night to you all!"

"Good-night!"

"Good-night!"

As John Bretherton, the last of the six guests, reached the doorway leading to the street, he was just in time to see Kyne getting into a taxi, followed by another man.

"One of the reporters, sir!" murmured the butler with a faint smile.

As the door of that house in Berkeley Square closed softly behind him, the dark-haired young man stood there for a few moments. The cool, night air came pleasant to his lungs. He had the feeling of having escaped from a house where death stalked amidst luxurious ostentation.

Behind him, a dead man lay with his face staring towards the moon. That same full moon shone down on the Mayfair square, gilding the houses, the trees, and the shining roads with that same silvery hue that had tinted the face of Phillip Allister. There was something stark, something deathly inhuman in that moonshine. It caused Bretherton to shiver slightly.

"Taxi, sir!"

The driver of a cab had drawn up by the pavement and was saluting him. Bretherton felt the need to escape that moonlight. He stepped down on to the pavement and opened the door of the cab. A policeman on guard watched him curiously.

"Where to, sir―?"

He gave an address in Hampstead. The driver nodded and slammed the door. With a grinding of gears the taxi lurched forward. With a sigh of relief, Bretherton sank back.

Something moved in the taxi at his side. He gave a gasp of alarm.

"Don't get excited, Bretherton!" chuckled a voice.

"Who are you ?"

A match flared in the darkness of the taxi, and was applied to the end of a cigarette. Bretherton saw a lean face, sandy-haired, and strangely familiar.

"Allister!" he gasped.

"Peter Allister," nodded the other, calmly, and dropped the match into the ash-tray. "Thanks for the telephone message Bretherton. I decided to bolt immediately I got it. I've been waiting in this taxi for you to reappear."

"Outside that house?"

"Of course," chuckled his companion. "I know the police are wanting me. They'll ask me all kinds of damn silly questions. And I have a strong disinclination to talk to any policeman tonight. I decided, therefore, that the safest place would be Berkeley Square itself. And so here I am."

Bretherton regarded his companion with dismay. "You're mad!" he gasped.

"So my step-brother Phillip says― or rather said," murmured Allister calmly. "But it's a long ride to Hampstead. Supposing you tell me how he died?"

3: The Moon Fades

"The flat has been loaned to me by an Oxford friend who is away on holidays," explained Bretherton, as they mounted the stone staircase at Hampstead.

"Then I can spend the night here," calmly suggested Peter Allister.

"There's a spare bed," agreed Bretherton. "But don't you think you had better clear out of London altogether? The police are bound to track you down here. I should be surprised if they didn't follow my taxi. That fellow Graves seemed to suspect me, as much as anyone, judging by his foxy face."

Peter Allister chuckled as the other inserted a key in the doorway.

"I daresay I shall have to meet Detective Inspector Graves in the near future. But at the moment, I'm tired, hungry and without any money."

Bretherton shrugged his shoulders.

"And yet two hours ago you became a millionaire," he said sardonically. "Come inside!"

He switched on the light, divested himself of his overcoat, and regarded the lean, ragged individual who had come with him in the taxi.

Peter Allister slumped wearily into an easy chair.

"Anything to drink here?" he asked.

"I'll find something," nodded Bretherton.

A strange individual, this stepbrother of the dead astronomer.

Whereas. Phillip Allister had inherited a fortune and dabbled with a dour determination in the mysteries of the universe, Peter Allister had taken an entirely different road. With no money, with no apparent ambition, he had drifted listlessly into the muddy of pool of London's forgotten men. He borrowed money, shamelessly, from his step-brother, until Phillip Allister had bluntly refused to give him any more.

"What d'you do with the money, anyway?" he had asked.

Peter Allister had smiled.

"Buy a bed, a meal, a packet of cigarettes, and then hire a piano for a few days."

That, to Phillip Allister was the one insufferable vice of this sardonic brother of his. Peter had a real passion for music. Give a him a piano and a book of Chopin Nocturnes, and the world of reality, its hungers and failures faded away. With his starved body hungering for a meal, he would cheerfully pay several shillings to sweat and mumble over "Tristan and Isolde" at Covent Garden. At the interval he would mix with the players in the orchestra, drink beer with them in some back street pub, and return to wallow again in the Wagnerian masterpiece.

"You're a damned fool to waste your time and energy on music," Phillip Allister told him.

"God gave me ears," the brother replied simply.

"Yes, and you fill them with sugary sweetness," Phillip had blared forth.

"You must come to a Schonberg concert with me," Peter had smiled. "You won't find much sweetness there "

And with the last five-pound note in his pocket, he had gone away from the house in Berkeley Square.

Of course within a fortnight he was back again asking for another loan. This time Phillip Allister had been adamant.

"Not another penny," he had told Peter, "until I find you working decently at a respectable job."

"But I'm coming to you because the chance of a lifetime has come to me," insisted Peter. "You know― or maybe you're not interested― but I've composed some thirty pianoforte studies. The time has come for me to play them to the musical world. For two hundred pounds, maybe a hundred and fifty, I can hire the Aeolian Hall and do a Bond Street recital. That will place me on the musical map. Then―"

"Go and get a job," retorted Phillip.

"But Phillip!"

"Get a job," repeated Phillip Allister and nodded to the butler to show this shabby man out of the house.

It was after that final encounter with his step-brother, that Peter had met Bretherton. The Oxford don had been on one of his hurried visits to London and, passing along a back street of the West End one evening, he had heard a piano playing a Chopin Nocturne. The soft liquid notes had the suggestion of Alpine ice melted by spring sunshine, dripping into pure snow. So brilliantly was the Nocturne played, that Bretherton stopped alongside a blind beggar, a few children and two women of the pavement who had all been attracted by this unusual music played by a shabby man with sandy hair at a piano which had been fitted into a handcart.

After the Chopin Nocturne, the shabby man had played Liszt's Liebestraume. The beautiful sadness of that music had caused a tear to trickle down the painted face of one of the women.

"Lovely, ain't it?" she commented to her companion. "Sounds like a hymn."

And she had been among the few who had dropped coppers into a greasy cap brought round by the player. The others faded away as the music ceased. The loud-speaker of a neighbouring radio shop began to blare jazz.

Bretherton had dropped a pound note into that greasy cap,

"You play well," he said to the shabby figure.

"Of course I do," the player had replied. "Too damned well for the streets of the West End. It's only because of the chance of meeting a sentimental fool like yourself that I go on playing."

Bretherton had laughed at the blunt remark.

"Come and have a drink," he suggested.

"Certainly, If it amuses you, and you'll pay."

IT WAS OVER a glass of beer in a noisy pub, with the piano marooned in the gutter outside, that Bretherton had learned the identity of this shabby individual with the sandy hair and the objectionable manners, Peter Allister, step-brother of the millionaire who dabbled in astronomy.

"I can hardly believe it," Bretherton had said.

Peter Allison had laughed, and drained his glass.

"It's true enough. And I don't blame my step-brother for closing down on me. He's not interested in music, you see. Only astronomy. I doubt whether he would recognise Gustav Holst's "Planets" if he heard it. He'd probably say it was an unearthly noise― which, of course, it is meant to be― I'll have another beer if I still amuse you."

"You do," nodded Bretherton, and gave the order.

"We had the same father, but not the same mother, thank goodness," went on Peter. "Old Allister married a second time, late in life. My mother endured a good deal. The old man talked incessantly about his first wife, her qualities, her unstinted admiration of himself. Although she had died, her ghost sat constantly in the company of that dining-table in the house in Berkeley Square. My mother endured it, silently, and died with a sigh of relief after giving birth to myself. Old Allister felt I had cheated him out of something. He disliked me. When he died, he left everything to Phillip. He always insisted that I should come to a bad end. And because I haven't a penny, I have no shame in asking for pounds from brother Phillip. And now Phillip washes his hands of me―"

Bretherton had sympathised with this arrogant individual in shabby clothes. It was then he had disclosed that he would be dining at the house in Berkeley Square a week hence. He had promised Peter Allister that he would take Phillip aside during the evening, and suggest tactfully that the young step-brother should be helped.

"I know I've got the stuff of real music in me," Peter had declared arrogantly. "And if you don't believe me, buy me another drink and I'll go outside and play you one of my compositions."

And the hungry-faced young man had gone into the street, stood in the gutter at his handcart piano, and played a remarkable piece of modern cacophony in a frenzied, drunken manner. A strange scene in that badly lit street, with two cats scuttering into the shadows at his noisy invasion.

In the midst of the crescendo, a policeman had materialised and looked down on the player with majestic bewilderment.

"Now, my lad," he warned. "Stop that, and move on."

Peter Allister had brought his piece to a dramatic finale. He stood there, his head bowed.

"D'you hear what I said," continued the policeman. "No playing for money in this street."

Peter seemed to recognise the constable for the first time.

"I'm not playing for money," he retorted, briefly.

"What are you playing for, then? asked the policeman, dangerously.

"For my own amusement."

"And mine," added Bretherton, coming on to the pavement. "That's all right, constable," he nodded.

"Is he a friend of yours?"

"Yes."

Peter Allister had grinned at that. "Then get him home-and his piano. He's creating a nuisance in this street."

And with stately tread, the police man passed on.

Under such strange circumstances, the two young men had became acquainted. They found a common spiritual interest in their undisguised hostility to the civilisation of to-day. Peter Allister found escape in his music; Bretherton in his astronomical studies. But both of them confessed to a youthful despair in the world as they found it.

"I'll do my best to talk with your step-brother when I dine with him," Bretherton had said, at parting.

"Thanks," replied Peter Allister, laconically, and walked away, pushing his handcart piano after he had left lodging house address with the Oxford don.

And now they had met a second time. Bretherton had failed to get Phillip Allister aside for a moment before that remarkable scene in the observatory. The moon, and always the moon had been the obsession of the moment. Then came the strange death of Phillip Allister, and in the general confusion, Bretherton had dialled the lodging house where he had been staying, but failed to find him. He had left a message.

"Yes, I got the message," nodded Peter, stretching his cracked boots in front of the gas-fire which Bretherton had lit.

Bretherton looked closely at the tired face and thought he detected a cruel droop of the mouth.

"By the way, Allister," he asked, quietly. "Where were you at nine thirty-one this evening ?"

"Haven't the faintest idea," was the dreamy response. "Wandering about London somewhere... somehow."

"Think, man!" urged Bretherton.

"That's just what I was doing," smiled Peter. "Wandering about thinking. There was a melody in my brain. Dancing there. Insistent. Asking to be dragged out of the white pulp that was throbbing. I walked up and down the streets for hours trying to give it birth. I even scrawled some of the notes on &,n old envelope."

And he fished a dirty piece of paper from his ragged jacket. It was scrawled, incomprehensively, with notations.

Bretherton ignored it

"So that if the police asked you to account for your movements this evening, you wouldn't be able to tell them?" he asked.

"No."

"You might even have been in that house in Berkeley Square?"

"I might."

"And when you heard the news of your step-brother's death-you bolted," went on Bretherton, relentlessly.

"I admit it shocked me into action," said Peter. "Not that I was particularly sorry about Phillip. He's had a damned amusing time with more money than he could spend. And there wasn't much brotherly love between us."

"Still, it's rumoured that he's left you a considerable fortune."

The figure in the easy chair rose and shook himself.

"I don't want a fortune. It will probably be the ruin of me. All I want from life is food, drink, a bed and a piano. The rest of the world can go to the devil."

And he sat down again, fumbling for a cigarette.

"Well, I daresay the police are anxious to give you that, with the exception of the piano, if they can locate you," murmured Bretherton. "I suppose you realise, Allister, that you'll have to face the police sooner or later. Why not to-night?"

The other shook himself angrily.

"I'll think it over. Give me time. I'm only wanting a bed here for tonight."

"You can have that with pleasure," was the reply. "But it rather suggests that in hiding yourself, you are hiding something vital in connection with this crime."

"Is it crime " countered Peter.

"The police talked of murder."

"Who would want to murder Phillip ?"

"You might, for one," argued Bretherton. "You gain a tremendous lot of money by his death."

"Yes," sighed Peter, "I suppose you are right. And I daresay that canny butler heard me threaten Phillip on the last occasion we met."

"Did you do that ?" The other smiled.

"It's a habit of mine. I always talk of death and violence when I'm denied anything. I suppose it's the selfish, individual streak in me. What Nietzsche would call 'the grand barbarian demanding.' I even threatened to split the skull of a fellow who tried to cheat me out of a halfpenny yesterday when I was buying a packet of cigarettes."

"It won't sound nice in a court of law," pointed out Bretherton. "And you've got a good deaf to explain."

Peter stretched himself and yawned. He drained his glass and rose.

"I'll sleep on it, anyhow," he said. "Lead me to the bed like a good fellow."

An hour later Bretherton, who had been sitting by the fire smoking innumerable cigarettes, rose and glanced at the clock. It was two o'clock in the morning. Before going to his own bed, he stood for a few moments at the door of the room in which Peter Allister slept.

Through the window came the misty light of the moon. The shining sphere seemed to be swathed in tenuous, gauze-like cloud as though hiding itself and its mysteries from those humans who had dared to gaze upon its naked glories.

And then the gaze of Bretherton travelled to the sleeper on the bed. Despite the hungry look of the face and the more youthful appearance, it might have been the dead man lying there again, a silver pallor on his features. The step-brothers were much alike. For a second, Bretherton was tempted to touch the sleeping man to make certain that he was alive. But the sleeper stirred, and muttered something.

Tiptoeing into the room, Bretherton bent down to catch that whisper. It dribbled from the sleeper's lips once again.

"The moon... the moon symphony. Music... cold and the clanging cymbal of death..."

With a little shiver, Bretherton padded silently towards his own room.

It was nearly ten o'clock in the morning before Peter Allister made his reappearance in the living-room of the flat. He had lolled luxuriously in a hot bath, helping himself to Bretherton's razor, and entered the room rubbing his hands with, joy at the smell of coffee and the aroma of bacon and eggs, which Bretherton himself had prepared in the kitchen.

"Ah! It's good to be alive!" he shouted. "A very good morning to you, Bretherton.

Bretherton gave a grunting response.

"You sound devilish cheerful. Take a glance at the morning paper," he advised. "You'll discover plenty of death and violence in it."

"I can stomach it, with that breakfast aroma tantalising me," replied Peter, callously. "Well, let me read the worst."

It confronted him, with a streamer headline

DOES THE MOON MURDER?

MAYPAIR TRAGEDY LAST NIGHT

BRILLIANT ASTRONOMER DIES

AT THE TELESCOPE

There followed an emotionally written account of how Phillip Allister had died in the presence of six famous astronomers while making some unique observations of the moon's surface. While the suggestion that Allister had been poisoned was vaguely hinted, emphasis was laid upon the silver-faced appearance of the body.

Almost as though the moon's rays had killed the unfortunate Phillip Allister, went on the report, in an interview granted to The Daily Call, the world renowned astronomer, Dr. Edwin Kyne, of the Mount Wilson Observatory, who was one of the guests at this death party, recalled a series of inexplicable tragedies connected with recent studies of the moon's surface.

"Being a scientist," said Dr. Kyne, "I am not superstitious. But a it's difficult to explain these sad coincidences where death has come to research workers concentrating their attention on the moon. It may be that these men have laid down their lives for the furtherance of science!"

The tragedies referred to by Dr. Kyne were as follows:

August 12, 1934.― Professor Eugene Mayer, of New York, found dead beside his telescope. A verdict of death from natural causes was recorded.

October 18, 1934.― Dr. Engels and two assistants killed at Jena Observatory by a bomb explosion. Communist activities suspected, but not proved.

February 6, 1935.― William Stanmore, assistant observer at Cambridge, found dead beside his telescope. Suspected suicide.

"Each of these tragedies took place at full moon," pointed out Dr. Kyne, "and there may be some significance in the fact that the men who died were all engaged in a special study of the moon's surface.

"Was there any special significance in Phillip Allister's moon's studies?" Dr. Kyne was asked.

"In my humble opinion," replied the famous astronomer, "Allister's astronomical studies can be dismissed as pure moonshine. Pure moonshine," he repeated.

The Daily Call telephoned the Astronomer Royal, Sir James Bennett, and gave him the first news of the tragedy. Asked if he had any comments to make on the theory of Dr. Kyne, Sir James said: "There is nothing in it."

Detective Inspector Graves, of Scotland Yard, is investigating the affair. The inquest will be held tomorrow, when it is expected that the relatives of Mr. Allister will be present to give evidence.

"So they haven't traced me yet," chuckled Sir Peter, "having digested this last item of information.

"But I wager they will, before the day is out," said Bretherton, entering the room with a frying pan and depositing a large helping of bacon and eggs on Peter's plate. "I have a sneaking respect for that foxy faced Graves. He's a man who knows his job."

"His job is to suspect," grinned 'Peter, reaching for a slice of bread. "And in this affair, I am the suspect."

Bretherton, having breakfasted an hour earlier, lit a cigarette and lounged by the gas-fire.

"Well," he murmured. "You've read the account in the newspaper, and you've heard my own story of last night's happenings. I would like to have your opinion."

Peter Allister, his mouth full of food, shook his head. He took a deep draught of coffee.

"I'm told every day that science is. defeating the criminal," he said at last. "But if a crime was committed last night-remember, that has yet to be proved― don't you consider it remarkable that six famous scientists should have been present and each declared himself baffled ?"

"Crime is not a matter for astronomers," said Bretherton.

"Crime is a matter for everyone," insisted Peter, reaching out for an! other piece of bread. "If only the astronomers would turn their telescopes the other way round and regard the human worm instead of distant worlds, the gain to humanity would be immense... Is that the marmalade ?"

"I accept your jibe," smiled Bretherton, "but I still don't see your point about each scientist present I last night declaring himself baffled."

"My point is that one of these scientists must have known the circumstances of the crime, but for reasons best known to himself led the others to believe he was in the dark. I even confess to a suspicion that you yourself have not revealed everything that you learned last night," he concluded, with a shrewd glance at his host.

"What makes you think that ?" asked Bretherton.

Peter poured out another cup of coffee.

"It is obvious that the scientist is the only man with something to say to-day," he resumed. "Unfortunately he doesn't know how to say it. I don't include you in that category, Bretherton. There is a touch of the artist in you. And you can explain yourself, which is an unusual and perhaps dangerous gift in a scientist. Yet I venture to think you did not tell me everything that you learned last night in he observatory."

"No, I did not," admitted Bretherton, quietly.

"Does the morning light induce confession?"

Bretherton regarded the ascending smoke of his cigarette.

"Even now I am not certain," he murmured. "I wanted to consider the matter. I spent an hour pondering over it after you had gone to bed."

"I gathered something was dawning in your mind," nodded Peter.

"Even such a magnificent spectacle as the Milky Way," went on Bretherton in a curiously detached voice, "is, considered by some investigators as a vague spiral scarcely to be distinguished from the ascending smoke of a cigarette."

"Personally, I prefer the cigarette," said Peter, reaching out a hand to the box on the table. "But go on, Bretherton. There is in your face the solemn stare of one who has gazed at infinity and found it awesome."

"That's just what happened," said Bretherton. "I gazed through that telescope into a crater of the moon and saw something that was awesome."

It was Peter's turn to stare.

"So you did see something as you lay there beside my step-brother's body. What was it you saw?" he asked in a whisper.

The whisper shook Bretherton back to consciousness. A sceptical smile crossed his face.

"What did you expect me to see? A monster in the moon, a god-monster of the Apocalypse? No, my friend. The ordinary man may challenge the heavens and say to himself, 'One day I shall be God.' But not the astronomer. He is merely cursed with curiosity. What he sees he must prove, measure, and weigh. And that is why I'm going to leave you now and set out for Greenwich?"

"Why Greenwich?" said Peter, lazily.

"Because it is on the meridian. Longitude zero. And there is no more fascinating beginning to mathematical calculations than zero. It may lead you anywhere."

Peter Allister watched him as he struggled into a coat, and reached out for a felt hat.

"What am I expected to do?" he asked.

"That is for yourself to decide," nodded Bretherton. "I shall be back some time this evening. If you want me urgently, 'phone Greenwich."

Peter called to him as he was closing the door of the flat.

"Be careful, Bretherton! Zero may lead you... where it led my step brother."

But Bretherton had not heard him. He was gone.

AN HOUR LATER, having smoked innumerable cigarettes, paced up and down the flat, screwed the newspaper into a ball and kicked it savagely into a corner, Peter Allister had roused seven devils within himself.

There was a ferocious gleam in his eye. His temperament lusted for destruction. He discovered a cabinet gramophone and a drawer full of records. Setting the machine in motion, he took the first record to hand and let the needle whirr into the wax. In a few seconds the pseudo-Oriental music of an Indian love lyric began to steal forth.

An oath burst from his lips. He seized the record from the machine and broke it in a dozen pieces over his knee. Then he ground his heel into the mess of shellac on the floor.

"Now I feel better," he grunted.

He perused the other records. At last, with a chuckle of joy, he seized upon one that satisfied him. It was Ravel's Bolero. The needle touched the first slow rhythm of the primitive dance. With head cocked sideways and a queer grin on his hungry face, Peter Allister listened. The savage dance swelled into a slow thunderous rhythm. Peter stamped his foot. His thin hands began to cleave the air and conduct the imaginary orchestra before him. u.ne ( ecstasy of the Spanish music possessed

And in the middle of the dance, the door bell of the flat sounded.

He ignored it. The mad shrilling of the flutes, the interminable drumming, and the lilt of the violin lifted him into another world.

"Go away!" he shouted. His aims were still cleaving the air. Instantly, the bell went on ringing.

"Damn you, whoever you are . ne shouted, flinging open the door, and returning to his imaginary orchestra.

The dance was reaching its climax now The whole orchestra was thrumming to the mad rhythm. And the slim, dark-haired girl with slightly rouged lips and intelligent brown eyes parted in astonishment, gazed at this gesticulating figure of a man standing over a gramophone.

With the clash of cymbals, Bolero ended. The irritating whirr of the needle replaced the fine frenzy of the music. With a sigh, Peter Allister snapped off the machine and turned to face the intruder.

"Hello !" he growled. "Who are you ?"

The slim girl entered the flat and began to strip off her gloves in an assured manner.

"I'm Jill." The girl moved towards the sitting-room as she announced herself. "And where is John?"

"John?"

"Yes― John Bretherton, my brother."

"Oh!"

A smile came to Peter Allister's face. But his gaze was fixed on those hands― so white, so sensitive, and cool-looking. He felt that the touch of the fingers against his head would drive away all the fury and devilment that lurked within him.

"Bretherton's gone to Greenwich," he mumbled. "Got a mathematical problem to work out."

"I must see him!" the girl went on. "Something dreadful has happened."

"What?"

He was startled at the troubled gleam in her eyes.

"John was at a party last night . when a man died, horribly, in the observatory. But you must have seen it in the newspaper. I left Oxford by the first train immediately I read it."

"Oh, that!" He smiled reassuringly at her. "There's nothing to worry about."

"But Phillip Allister was―"

"Was my step-brother," he announced, callously. "Allow me to introduce myself― Peter Allister." I

She sank quietly into one of the easy chairs. He noticed approvingly that the droop of her black skirt did not conceal the shapely legs sheathed in silk stockings. She caught the glance, flushed a little, and twitched down her skirt a few inches

"I understand that Phillip Allister was engaged on a special study of the moon's surface," she went on. "Is that so?"

Peter shrugged his shoulders. "So the newspapers assert."

She stared at him with her frank, brown eyes.

"But didn't you say you were Phillip Allister's step-brother?"

"I did."

"And weren't you present at the party?"

He shook his head.

"My step-brother and I were farther, apart than I understand the moon is from the sun. We met only to curse each other."

She tightened those slightly rouged lips.

"The fact that your step-brother died so horribly doesn't seem to affect you particularly.

"It doesn't," he admitted― "at least, not in a sentimental, or, if you like, fraternal way. But it does in another fashion."

"May I ask how ?"

There was a delicious touch of sarcasm in her voice that he adored.

"I understand he's left me most of his fortune."

"Maybe you could squeeze a few tears on that account?"

"I don't think so," he retorted, shaking his head. "You see, there is another consideration."

"And what is that ?"

"I am suspected of murdering him."

"How awful !"

Her face paled. Yet she continued to scrutinise this shabby, hungry faced man with the sandy hair.

"It is rather disconcerting," he nodded. "I'm just wondering what to do about it."

"Who says Phillip Allister was murdered?" she asked, quickly.

"Your brother is of that opinion, for one," said Peter, calmly. "And I believe a certain Detective Inspector Graves is another."

"If only John would realise it," said the girl, slowly. She again scrutinised the shabby man who was openly admiring her. "Why did you come to this flat?" she asked, sharply.

He gave a sheepish grin.

"In the first place for bed and breakfast. Secondly, to get away from the police."

"At least, you're frank," she conceded. "Maybe you'll go further and tell me whether you murdered Phillip Allister or not."

Those brown eyes seemed to reach into the depths.

"I've told you that I didn't particularly like my step-brother," he said, quietly. "But I didn't murder him."

There was silence for a moment.

"Then why are you hiding here ?" she challenged.

He found himself faltering under her cool scrutiny.

"I haven't... what do you call it... an alibi," he replied.

"There is your conscience," she said, a touch of contempt in her voice

That roused him.

"My conscience and I rarely meet," he laughed. "And then only to cut each other dead."

She rose, and sighed.

"Well, at least your conscience might have urged you to clear away these breakfast dishes. They look filthy."

"I... I'm sorry," he stammered. Those beautiful, cool hands were already collecting the plates and cups. "What are you going to do?" he asked in alarm.

"Wash up, of course !" she replied prosaically.

"Do let me help you ?" he begged.

A faint smile hovered on her lips.

"Suppose you fill a kettle with water and put it on the gas-stove?" she suggested.

"At once!" he responded, and attacked the little kitchen with alacrity.

Within ten minutes they were friends. Or so, at least, Peter flattered himself.

"It's marvellous !" he murmured.

"What is?"

Her white hands were deep in soapy water. A print apron was tied about

"Washing-up!" he declared, enthusiastically.

"Have you ever done it before?" she asked, somewhat mischievously.

"Not that I can remember."

"I do it often," she said. "And I can't say that I enjoy it."

"Ah ! But it has to be done by two people," he nodded, confidently. "There's a real joy in washing-up."

And with a crash, the plate dropped from his soapy fingers and smashed to the floor.

He regarded the disaster with dismay. He trembled at the thought of meeting those brown eyes again.

"I'm a clumsy fool!" he muttered.

"You are," she agreed. "Pick up the pieces and throw them into the dust bin. And at the same time you might pick up the pieces of that gramophone I saw littering the living room. I suppose you dropped that, too?"

"No, I deliberately smashed it."

"Why?"

"Because it's the only satisfaction that one can get out of a piece of music one hates."

A ripple of laughter came from her. He looked up, shyly. She was more adorable than ever, with her head flung back and the sunlight gleaming through the dusty window against her slender white throat.

"She's damnably beautiful!" he decided to himself.

"I gather you prefer Ravel's Bolero to that smashed record," she said.

"It's magnificent," he responded. "A favourite of mine."

"But not mine," she replied, decisively. "I prefer Cesar Franck. There's more beauty, more soul in him than Ravel. The Variations Symphoniques, for example. I find excitement in that."

"Contrapuntal excitement," nodded Peter, eagerly. "He went back to Bach. You've got good taste in music. Why the devil isn't there a piano in this flat? I could play you some Cesar Franck."

"I hope your hands are cleverer at the piano than at the sink," she smiled. "Those plates are getting dirty again for want of drying.

He took up the wet crockery, nervously,

"That's how I met your brother," he explained. "Through music."

She was wiping those slender hands on a dirty towel.

"So you are the extraordinary pianist in a back street that he told me about," she hazarded.

He grinned.

"I'm the fellow, Peter Allister."

The name brought that troubled expression to her face again. She untied the apron and walked into the living room. He followed, a few moments later. She had curled herself in one of the easy chairs. He lounged by the fire, feeling unusually uncouth.

"I suppose John is coming back here this evening ?" she asked.

He nodded.

"You seem anxious about him," he said.

"I am," she replied. Once again her brown eyes met his. And this time some of the confidence in them had evaporated. "You see," she began, in a confessional manner. "John has become obsessed in lunar studies."

"Why shouldn't he ?" said Peter confidently. "He's an astronomer."

"I know," she replied. "But this series of strange deaths, these men who died while watching the moon, the suspected murder of your step-brother― I'm frightened."

And she shivered.

He put out a protecting hand and touched her.

"You've been reading those newspaper suppositions," he said.

"Are they suppositions?" she asked.

"More likely suppositions," he replied. "And believe me, your brother is quite capable of looking after himself. He's a man in a thousand. What's more, he-he's the only friend I have "

"What makes you say that?" she asked, looking up.

Once again the shy grin crossed his face.

"Friendship doesn't come easily to a man of my type," he said. "That's why I value your brother's friendship more than anything else in the world."

"Do you mean that?"

He nodded. She clasped her bands, tightly.

"Will you help me then, to persuade him to abandon these studies of the moon. The moon! I loath it."

There was vehemence in her voice.

"Of course I'll help you," he declared.

"I fear that he may die― as those others died," she shivered. "And John is the only person who matters to me in this world."

Peter Allister struggled with himself. For the first time in his life he was about to behave heroically. He felt a little fatuous about it, a little absurd But that slim figure in the easy chair inspired him.

"Have you got any money," he asked shamelessly.

She looked up in surprise. "Yes, of course."

"A pound ?"

"Yes."

He drew himself up.

"Then we'll go and have a luxurious lunch. At the Cafe Royal. We'll do ourselves well."

"On my pound?"

"On your pound. It will cover the lunch and a brandy and soda for me. I need that, for I'm going to do an extremely foolish thing."

"What is that ?"

"I'm going to Scotland Yard and ask to see Detective-Inspector Graves. But not until after lunch, with you."

She rose, with shining eyes.

"I'll love it," she said. Those white hands reached out for her gloves, which he eagerly held out to her. "I'm glad you've found your conscience," she smiled, mischievously.

"We've just met, and nodded casually to each other," he laughed. "Come on, Jill."

And joyously, they slammed the door of the flat behind them.

4: Eclipse

"AND NOW, Professor Carr," said the Coroner, adjusting his pince-nez and giving a quick glance at the burly figure with the grey hair, standing erect in the witness-box. "I would like to ask you a question."

"I hope I can assist you," nodded Carr.

As a scientific man, and to some extent acquainted with the astronomical studies of the deceased," went on the Coroner, "can you yourself think of any reason why Phillip Allister should take his own life?"

The professor considered the point. "I hate to say it, but there was one reason which might have induced Phillip Allister to commit suicide," he declared at length. "But I would rather not speak about it."

"I'm afraid you must, Professor Carr," insisted the Coroner.

The figure in the witness-box shrugged his shoulders.

"Philip Allister arranged this party so that he might demonstrate to a gathering of astronomers some peculiar happening on the moon's surface which he claimed to have discovered."

The Coroner nodded.

"That is so. All the witnesses are agreed on that point."

'Exactly," went on Professor Carr.  "And the real tragedy is that when the moon was at the full and the telescope was focussed directly at the point which Allister wanted us to see nothing was happening."

"What makes you so certain?"

"Because I looked through the telescope myself," replied Professor Carr simply.

"Well?"

Again the professor shrugged his shoulders.

"I venture to think that even Allister saw nothing that night. Some days previously he had discussed his theory with me. I went into the details. Frankly, they didn't convince me. I pointed out to Allister that the light and shadows on the moon played queer tricks on those who observed them. It was possible that what he thought was a substance was merely a shadow. I suggested that he should make several more careful observations before attempting to prove his theory."

"And did he?"

"No. For the moment he had convinced himself. His next observation was to be in our company when the moon was at the full."

The Coroner nodded sympathetically.

"I think I understand your point Professor Carr. You believe that Allister had already discovered his observations to have been mistaken, and rather than face the derision of the scientific world, elected to take his own life in this dramatic fashion?"

"I put it forward as a theory― for what it is worth," said Professor Carr guardedly.

"Thank you. Professor," nodded the Coroner. "That is all."

As the fine, athletic figure of the scientist stepped down from the witness box Detective Inspector Graves muttered softly to his subordinate.

"That little touch of popular science from the Professor has done for me."

"The jury certainly lapped it up," agreed his colleague, sympathetically.

They both gazed at the lawyer who had risen in brisk fashion.

lawyer addressing the Coroner. "I beg to move for an adjournment of this inquest."

"On what grounds?" asked the Coroner, raising his head in surprise

"On the information of the police officers investigating this case. They have not yet completed their task."

"On such evidence as I have heard," pointed out the Coroner, "the case seems straightforward enough. The evidence of the last witness, Professor Carr, for example, even though given reluctantly, sheds a very clear light upon the unfortunate happening."

"I agree, sir," said the lawyer. "But the police have yet to complete their investigation into the movements of all those who are concerned in the tragedy. And I ask for an adjournment of a month for that purpose."

The Coroner flicked the pages of his notes.

"I appear to have heard the evidence of all who were present in the house at the time of this sad occurrence."

"Quite so, sir. But further evidence may change entirely the aspect of this case―"

The Coroner gazed severely at the lawyer.

"Does the evidence which you say the police are gathering suggest that Phillip Allister did not take his own life ?"

"I wouldn't go so far as to say that," said the lawyer, guardedly.

The Coroner sniffed.

"I appreciate the necessity for a full investigation of anything that may throw light upon this sad affair," he said. "But I should have thought the evidence of several distinguished men of science good enough to have satisfied any jury."

Three members of the jury nodded at this remark.

"Under the circumstances," went on the Coroner, "I will adjourn the case. But for a week only. A month is absurd. I shall expect the police to produce any evidence they may have to-day week. The court stands adjourned."

And with an irritated scrape of his chair, the Coroner turned and disappeared.

The lawyer turned despairingly to Detective Inspector Graves.

"A pig-headed old blighter," he murmured. "He's made up his mind already."

Graves sighed. "It's asking a lot for me to find a murderer within a week," he said.

"Are you certain it's murder?" queried the lawyer.

Graves was watching the smiling , but hungry face of Peter Allister greeting the lovely, dark-haired Jill Bretherton at the back of the court.

"I'm pig-headed, too," he snorted. "And I think it's murder."

They joined the crowd jostling for the exit.

PETER ALLISTER was not the first to reach the slim, green-frocked figure of Jill Bretherton. He was forestalled by the smiling, athletic Professor Edward Carr.

"My dear Miss Bretherton," murmured the Oxford Savant. "I'm sorry to find you in this sordid atmosphere."

"I'm concerned about John," she replied .

"I understand," he nodded, sympathetically. "And I would like, if I may, to have a little talk with you about your brother." He lowered his voice. "It... concerns his safety."

"You think he is in danger?" she asked, quickly.

"Isn't he becoming unusually interested in the moon?" he countered.

"That is so," she faltered.

He smiled, and took her arm, possessively.

"Of course, one mustn't pay attention to these scares," he murmured, "but the moon does appear to be a dangerous subject for astronomers just now. Your brother left for Greenwich, immediately after giving evidence. Perhaps you will honour me by lunching. Then we can talk."

Jill became aware of Peter Allister hovering, impatiently a few yards away.

"I had promised to lunch with a... a friend," she said half turning.

The professor showed his disappointment, but stood his ground as Peter Allister came forward. Carr held out his hand to the young man.

"I hadn't heard of you until today," he said, "but I knew your brother well."

"Step-brother," corrected Peter.

"A sad business," murmured Professor Carr. "Sad for all concerned. I was just sympathising with Miss Bretherton and offering lunch. But I understand you've forestalled me," he added with a smile.

Peter grinned,

"Maybe you would like to lunch us both," he suggested, shamelessly.

Jill gazed at him in surprise. For the moment, Professor Carr was taken aback.

"Well, why not ?" he countered.

"May I suggest the Bristol Grill," went on Peter. "It's two years since I lunched there. Haven't been able to afford it since."

Professor Carr laughed.

"Now that you've come into Phillip Allister's fortune, you'll be able to afford all those luxuries."

Peter grinned back.

"But I haven't come into the fortune yet. You see, I'm still suspected of the murder."

"Dear me! Was that what the police investigations meant?"

Peter nodded.

"Moreover, I'm hungry, and I've only two shillings in my pocket. And that's borrowed money," he added, giving an affectionate glance at Jill. "So shall we say the Bristol Grill, Professor ?"

"You deserve your lunch," smiled the Professor, and signalled for a taxi.

Ten minutes later they were sipping cocktails. Professor Carr excused himself to make arrangements for booking a table.

"Peter, your manners are as dreadful as ever," Jill declared.

"Are they ?"

"Of course they are. What induced you to invite yourself to lunch?"

"I particularly wanted to make the acquaintance of Professor Carr," said Peter, swallowing the last of his cocktail with appreciation

"But why?" asked Jill.

"He's the one man among all those astronomers who has a theory," said Peter. "And I want to talk to him about that theory. You must remember that Scotland Yard only allows me to go about on sufferance. A heavy hand may fall upon my shoulder at any moment," he grinned.

"Don't," she shivered.

Professor Carr reappeared. "Shall we eat ?" he inquired.

The Professor and his two guests seated themselves within the pink and mirrored walls which had become a noonday Mecca to all or would-be celebrities. At an adjoining table was a famous film producer with the latest star of his galaxy. A well-known actress with her third husband preened herself at another table. A famous conductor, an Indian rajah, an ex-heavyweight champion, a Spanish tennis player, and a Covent Garden soprano, eating lobster-all chattered with the consciousness of people in the limelight.

"I have a secret ambition about this place," murmured . Peter, eyeing the bill-of-fare avidly.

"And what is that?" asked Professor Carr.

"To be flung out of it," retorted Peter.

"For goodness sake behave yourself to-day," pleaded Jill.

"I intend to," smiled Peter. "I'm going to begin with half-a-dozen oysters."

He tipped the bill-of-fare over to the Professor. Very soon they were enjoying the best of food and the best of wine. Professor Carr proved himself an excellent host. He charmed Jill Bretherton ; he accepted Peter Allister's rough Bohemianism with perfect ease,

"And now, professor, I would like to ask you something," blurted Peter, as the coffee arrived," and he selected an excellent Corona. "What do you think of all these moon theories."

"First tell me what you think," smiled Carr.

"Moonshine," retorted Peter, bluntly. "But then, I'm a musician. I left astronomy to my step-brother."

"Both music and astronomy are based on mathematics," pointed out Carr.

"That's true," replied Peter. "But my mathematics come forth as sound."

"So do the mathematics of astronomy," said Carr. "I have a gramophone record in my laboratory at Oxford which is the sound made by moonshine through a photo-electric cell. If at any time you are in Oxford, I will play it to you. Most remarkable music, I can assure you."

"I shall make it my business to come to Oxford to hear it," said Peter. "The more I listen to your talk of the moon, the more interesting that dead lump of matter in the sky becomes."

"There is a devil in the moon," broke in Jill Bretherton.

Carr gazed curiously at her.

"It may be that you are right, Miss Bretherton," he said. "I have a great respect for feminine intuition. And because you feel that way, and because I know something of its dangers, I urge you to stop your brother in his crazy experiments."

"But in what way is Bretherton placing himself in danger?" asked Peter.

"Bretherton is a brilliant young man," said Professor Carr, quietly, but at the moment he is dealing with matters that are dangerously beyond him."

"Oh, I wish he would listen to me," said Jill, fervently.

"Are his crazy experiments concerned with the possibility of life on the moon?" asked Peter.

"That is what I suspect."

"And is there life on the moon?"

Professor Carr leaned forward. There was a tired expression in his face.

"I have been asked that question a hundred times lately," he said. "I am old-fashioned enough to believe that the moon is exactly as it was when Galileo first saw it. The moon is airless, waterless, dead. It has always been so."

"But what of the moon to-day?" insisted Peter. "I seem to recall in the lecture on astronomy that was given at the inquest to-day, some talk of a Dr. Pickering."

Carr smiled, tolerantly.

"Professor W. H. Pickering, of Harvard, is something of a theorist. He compared old and new charts of the moon and made photographs of the lunar surface under all possible conditions of illumination. Here and there he professed to see signs of volcanic activity and of vegetation growing with prodigious rapidity during fourteen days of glaring sunshine, only to perish in the fourteen-day lunar night."

"And what do you think of the theory?" asked Peter.

"Astronomers generally are not impressed," evaded Professor Carr. "But it has led a few enthusiasts, such as your lamented step-brother, to make a close study of the moon. And by a series of coincidences such studies have led to disaster. That is all I need say as a warning to young Bretherton."

Jill laid a hand upon his arm.

"Thank you, Professor Carr. I appreciate your kindness. Believe me, I'm truly concerned about John and his studies. Ever since the death of Phillip Allister, he has behaved strangely. I hate the moon," she declared vehemently.

"And you?" asked Professor Carr, turning to the sardonic young man facing him.

Peter grinned again.

"I was just trying to recall those words of Milton. How do they go? Ah, yes!

'...now glow'd the firmament

With living sapphires; Hesperus that led

The starry host, rode brightest, till the Moon

Rising in clouded majesty, at length

Apparent queen, unveil'd her peerless light

And o er the dark her silver mantle threw."

As he intoned the verse, the well-known actress with her third husband, swivelled round in astonishment,

"Very pretty," nodded Carr, sarcastically. "But Milton was a blind man."

"And yet he saw more than the astronomers with all their telescopes," countered Peter. "No, it is the scientists to-day who curdle our blood with bogy tales. I am no hater of the moon. A dead world it may be. But it is lovely in its loneliness."

"Now you have forgotten your mathematics," laughed Professor Carr. "Have another liqueur before we part? I must get back to Oxford this evening."

"I'll join you in a liqueur," said an excited voice.

They all looked up. It was John Bretherton who stood there. The intellectual face was flushed. There was an excited gleam in his eyes.

"Hello! I thought you were at Greenwich," said Professor Carr, carelessly.

"So I was. But I returned when I heard a piece of important news."

"John, what has happened?" exclaimed Jill.

Bretherton ignored his sister. He turned to Carr.

"Pierre Kessel is coming to Greenwich next month," he said.

"And what is agitating the mind of our Paris confreré?" asked Carr. He signalled to the waiter and ordered liqueurs.

"The Moon!" declared Bretherton.

Carr looked up. His eyes narrowed.

"Well?"

"At midnight on September twelfth the moon will be nearer the earth than it has been for the past four years," went on Bretherton, excitedly. "And Kessel has asked the Astronomer Royal for permission to observe it through the Great Equatoria on that date."

"What on earth is the Great Equatoria?" asked Peter.

"A telescope," dismissed Bretherton. "Kessell says he wants to prove a point regarding the crater Eratosthenes, "which he has developed through observations during the past year. I saw his letter, asking for permission, when I was at Greenwich to-day."

"And they have agreed?" asked Carr.

"Yes. Best of all, I got permission to be present myself on that occasion."

"A pity... a great pity!" sighed Professor Carr, signalling to the waiter for the bill.

"I suppose you'll be present also, Professor Carr," asked Peter, with a satisfied grin of content.

"Where?"

"At Greenwich."

Professor Carr nodded.

"I daresay. I'm usually called in to prove that these fanatical theorists are wrong. Yes, I'm sure to be there."

He tossed a note on to the plate and waved the waiter away. Then he rose, heavily.

"Now I must leave you young people," he sighed. "There is a good deal of work waiting for me at Oxford." He turned to Jill. "I hope to see more of you at Oxford, Miss Bretherton. We must talk these matters over again,"

"I shall be in Oxford, too," nodded Peter cheerily. "I'm coming to hear that gramophone record. In the meantime, thanks for the lunch― and the information about the moon."

The fixed, smiling face of Professor Carr moved away. Peter Allister followed him with his gaze.

"A very remarkable man," he declared."

SIX DAYS LATER, Constable Browne entered the dingy room at Scotland Yard where Detective-Inspector Graves was located.

"He's here again, sir," he said.

"Who?"

Graves was in one of his worst moods.

"That queer looking fellow― Peter Allister."

"Damn the fellow;" exclaimed Graves, and looked up expectantly.

Peter Allister did not disappoint him. He was standing there in the doorway.

"Not having heard from you," he began, sardonically, "I thought I would call."

"What d'you want?" asked Graves, bluntly.

"Well, there's that matter of the inquest to-morrow," said Peter, settling himself comfortably in a chair. "I was very interested to know whether I'm to be arrested for murder?"

"Have you by any chance come to make a confession?" asked Graves, leaning back in his chair.

Peter shook his head.

"Even if you can prove that I did the murder," he replied, "I'm afraid I couldn't help you. I can only remember composing a few bars of music that night. Is that a crime?"

"It would be, if you had sung them aloud and made yourself a public nuisance," said Graves.

"Maybe I did," pondered Peter. "I might have sung them as I walked the Embankment and there was no policeman to hear and arrest me. A great pity."

Graves stared at this sardonic individual who lounged carelessly before him. Murderers, as he knew only too well, had a streak of madness in them, making them do queer things. But would a murderer dare to confront him in this casual fashion in a room at Scotland Yard.

"Even if you proved to me that you were enjoying yourself on a roundabout at Hampstead Heath at nine thirty-one that evening," said the detective slowly, "it doesn't prove that you didn't murder Phillip Allister."

"Mean that the poison was administered earlier in the evening, eh?" suggested Peter.

"Exactly."

"Well," resumed Peter, "I've come here to know the worst. Are you going to arrest me?"

"Why are you so anxious to know?" asked the detective in turn.

"For several reasons," said Peter. "In the first place, I want to arrange a concert of my works to be held at the Aeolian Hall in the near future."

"Yes?"

"Also, I'm without money, although ".by the will of my stepbrother I should 'have inherited a fortune. The solicitors, being naturally very cautious, are not inclined to advance me anything."

"Any other reason?"

"Yes, I'm thinking of getting married," added Peter, defiantly.

"Really ! And I suppose the lady is naturally very cautious."

"She isn't aware of the fact that she's going to be my wife," grinned Peter. "At least, not yet."

"But you seem very confident," nodded Graves.

"All these matters can be arranged," Peter went on, calmly, "providing I am reasonably certain that I shall not have to rendezvous with a hangman at eight o'clock one morning in the near future."

Detective Inspector Graves could not resist a chuckle.

"You're rather a card," he smiled.

"Call me a genius. I prefer it," said Peter.

"Well, I'll be frank with you." The detective leaned back in his chair. "So far we haven't enough evidence to put you in gaol for a day."

"It's a relief to hear that from a detective at Scotland Yard," smiled Peter. "I might tell you that I've been threatened with it more than once from ordinary policemen."

"On what grounds?"

"Playing a piano in the streets. I made a tolerable living out of it."

"I hope you're not doing it now."

Peter shook his head.

"No, I'm living in the lap of luxury― but without a penny in my pocket. I sleep at the house in Berkeley Square. But I daresay you know that."

"Yes, I've checked your movements thoroughly," nodded Graves. "In fact, I could make a guess at the young lady you're thinking of marrying."

"Going to marry," corrected Peter. "But we'll leave her name out of it. And now, seeing you have been so frank with me, I'm going to tell you something."

"Go on. I've nothing else to do but sit here and listen to you," warned the detective.

"Since I've been at Berkeley Square," went on Peter, lazily, "I've been spending my evenings at the telescope. I'm becoming quite interested in the moon. I stare at the damned thing, night after night, peering into its craters and chasms, and generally challenging its silly but sinister face."

"Rather a dangerous occupation for anyone by the name of Allister, isn't it?"

"Not entirely," said Peter, reflectively. "I've come to the conclusion that the solution to the murder of Phillip Allister will be found in the moon itself."

"Then you yourself think it was a murder?" asked the detective, narrowing his eyes.

"I can't give you any proof― but I do," he replied. "Have you by any chance changed your opinion?"

Graves hesitated.

"This may be a case where my instinct is wrong. Yet, from the beginning, I believed that this was no ordinary poison suicide, but murder. Like you, I haven't any proof, but I still suspect murder."

Peter smiled, and pushed his packet of cigarettes across the table.

"Have one," he offered generously. "Now we have a common ground of understanding. You're not a bad fellow, Graves. A little lacking in grey matter, but we can't all be God's elected'"

"The fact that I'm not going to arrest you doesn't give you the right to be impertinent," snorted Graves.

Peter soothed him with a wave of his hand.

"I'm going to give you a line of thought," he said. "I suppose you read the newspapers, Graves ?"

"I'm chiefly interested in the sports pages."

"Yet you can't entirely have missed that tabulated series of deaths of astronomers― coincidences if you like― connected with the study of the moon."

"I think this case has already been ruined by too much moonshine," said Graves dangerously.

"Even so," went on Peter, quietly, "it might be worth while going into the dossiers of those cases and seeing if any one of the six guests who were present when Phillip Allister died were in the vicinity when the other deaths occurred."

"But one happened in New York, another in Jena, and a third in Cambridge," responded Graves, quickly.

"Astronomers travel over the earth's surface as well as through space time," said Peter. "I'm not going to suggest I that some scientist has committed a murder in the fourth dimension. We haven't reached that convenient point in science, as yet. But you must admit that it would be an even greater coincidence if one of those six guests at Phillip Allister's death party, had also been present in New York, Jena and Cambridge, when the other moon observers died."

Detective Inspector Graves shook his head.

"The idea is too fantastic," he replied. "Why should a scientist commit murder? There's no motive."

"Why did you suspect me of murder ?" asked Peter.

"Because there was a real motive gain. Most murders are committed for money."

"And yet money was the last thing I really wanted. At least the piles of money which are supposed to be coming to me."

"I wouldn't be too unhappy, if I was in your position," said Graves, grimly. "But you haven't answered my question. Is there a real reason why any one of those six scientists would commit murder?"

"I can't answer your question," replied Peter. "I don't know." He saw a malicious gleam of triumph on the detective's face. "But let me remind you. Graves, of one scientist who committed several murders and who Scotland Yard never arrested."

"And who might that be?" asked the detective, sarcastically.

"Jack the Ripper," replied Peter, ominously. "A medical scientist."

"Yes, but he was a maniac."

"I seem to have heard somewhere of moon manias," nodded Peter, significantly. "And now I must be going, Graves. Thanks for your reassuring remarks. I'll go ahead and fix up my concert. Oh, I was almost forgetting." He produced a brown paper parcel from beneath his shabby coat. "A little token of our friendship," he said, pushing a parcel across the table.

Graves drew himself up.

"We are not permitted to accept gifts," he said, in his official tone.

"Nevertheless, I insist," smiled Peter. "Au revoir, Graves! We shall meet again. Until September the twelfth."

With which cryptic remark, he lounged out of the room.

Graves was left staring at the brown paper parcel. Was the man who had been chatting with him with careless ease, a maniac? He backed away from his desk and rang the bell.

Constable Browne appeared.

"Just open that parcel. Browne," said Graves, carelessly.

"Yes, sir."

Prom a corner of the room and the corner of his eye he watched the policeman methodically snick the string and unfold the paper wrapper.

"What is it, Browne ?"

"A book, sir."

"A book !"

Graves took it in his hands. The shameless title glared at him: Popular Astronomy for Children. Even as he flung it down in disgust, a newspaper cutting fluttered from the pages. The detective picked it up and read :

A distinguished scientist is expected at Greenwich on September 12th. He is M. Pierre Kessel. the well-known French astronomer, and author of "Theorie du Movement de la Lune." M. Kessel. it is rumoured, has made some spectacular discoveries regarding the moon's surface and will check several important calculations from Greenwich Observatory at the time of the moon's closest approximation to the earth's surface on September 12th. Many other distinguished scientists are expected to be present on this occasion.

Graves stroked his jaw thoughtfully, and stared from his window at the Embankment below.

THE FACT that a former coal-miner of Newcastle was discovered to be the leader of an army of Chinese bandits, that the fourth richest girl in America ran away with a German waiter in a beer garden at Munich, and married him, all helped to distract the newspaper reading public away from the mysterious death of Phillip Allister, the moon-struck astronomer.

Furthermore, the fact that the Coroner and the jury in less than half an hour should bring in a verdict of "suicide while temporarily insane" conclusively ended the mystery so far as the newspapers were concerned.

Detective Inspector Graves was asked to direct his attentions to the alarming increase of burglaries in the Hampstead district. And he did tackle the job with his usual conscientious thoroughness with the result that one miserable individual from Hounsditch found loitering on Hampstead Heath was sentenced to three months' imprisonment.

Yet at the back of the detective's mind rankled the suspicion that someone had committed murder in Berkley Square and, to use his own phrase, "got away with it." Such things might be tolerated by the general public, but not by such a conscientious public servant as Detective Inspector Graves.

Moreover, Mrs. Graves was worried. Into the semi-detached villa in the newly-built suburb of Haxley, the carpet-slippered Mr. Graves was to be found in the evenings reading books on astronomy. Much more to the alarm of Mrs. Graves, her husband had unearthed a pair of old binoculars and would be found straddling the ro.se bed in his garden and staring stupidly through the binoculars at the moon. And this at the time of night when he should' be sipping his cup of cocoa and preparing himself for bed.

"Can't think what's come over you lately Albert," his wife ventured.

"Don't worry, Mabs," he replied. "I'm making a hobby of sorts out of the stars and such-like. Did you know that the moon is only a quarter of a million miles away from the earth."

"All the more reason why you should leave it alone," snapped his wife. "And if it's a hobby you're wanting, what about taking a look at the kitchen stove? It's never worked satisfactorily since we came into this house."

And with the air of an ill-treated slave she thrust the unwanted cup of cocoa into his hand. He sipped it mechanically.

But Detective Inspector Graves had made himself a nuisance to someone more important than his wife. One afternoon he had visited Greenwich Observatory, and to the serge-suited attendants at the lodge had demanded an ' interview with the Astronomer Royal.

On being shown into the drawing room of that charming house amidst the silver painted domes of the different observatories, he had come to the point with a disconcerting bluntness.

"I understand, sir," he said to the indifferently attentive Sir James Bennett, "that on September the twelfth, you are to have a visit from a well-known French astronomer ?"

"That is so," nodded the Astronomer Royal. "He is Pierre Kessel."

"And that he intends to make some observations on the moon?"

"At midnight on September twelve," agreed the Astronomer Royal.

"There will be other visitors present at this experiment?"

"Naturally. Several invitations have been sent out to leading scientists. M. Kessel himself wished it."

Graves took the plunge.

"I should like to be present at that experiment myself," he said, quietly.

The Astronomer Royal raised his eyes in surprise.

"May I ask why? It is most unusual to allow any but accredited scientists to enter the observatory after four-thirty in the afternoons.

Graves stood his ground.

"May I suggest that it is just a precautionary measure," he said.

The Astronomer Royal looked incredulous.

"Precautionary measure! I can assure you, inspector, that we need no police protection at Greenwich. Incidentally, we have our own group of attendants."

"Nevertheless, I'm afraid I must insist," went on Graves. "I should like permission to be present beside the telescope itself-the Great Equatoria, I believe it is called-and for six constables to be in the vicinity."

"Preposterous!" exploded Sir James. "I've never heard anything . like it. What sort of crime are you anticipating on September twelve?" he added, sarcastically.

"Murder!" replied Graves, in sombre voice.

The Astronomer Royal stared as though he could not believe his ears.

"This, I suppose, is the result of Allister's death," he said. "I could not have believed that Scotland Yard would be stampeded into such ridiculous action."

Nevertheless, Graves had persisted, stubbornly. Half an hour later he left with a grim smile of triumph on his face. In his pocket reposed a pass enabling him to be present at the astronomical experiment by M. Pierre Kessel on September 12th.

He had also been granted permission to station his men, as unobtrusively as possible, within the grounds of the observatory. And he had taken the precaution of examining for some fifteen minutes, the interior of that domed observatory. The Great Equatoria He began to plan his campaign over a cup of tea in a kiosk of Greenwich Park...

At that same moment a newly dressed, but still badly-dressed, Peter Allister was emerging from the Sceptre in the Oxford High, holding Jill Bretherton's arm in a possessive manner.

"It's nice to have tea with you," Jill was saying. "And unusual to know that you're paying for it," she added, a little maliciously.

He was still shy and somewhat awkward when confronting those deep, brown eyes.

"Yes, I'm staying in Oxford for some time," he warned her. "I've taken a room at the Sceptre indefinitely."

"Even though you possess a big house in Berkeley Square?" she asked.

"I hate it," he said. "And particularly the butler who runs it. I've really run away from it and left the house entirely to the cursed butler. So you're going to see a good deal of me within the next few weeks."

She smiled, but there was a troubled expression on her face. "I'm not sorry," she confessed. "John is becoming more difficul― teven secretive. He knows that I hate his moon studies! So he locks himself in his room at night and grapples with the most extraordinary mathematical calculations. I once attempted to tidy the papers in his room. He was furious. Accused me of spying on him."

Three were tears in her eyes. Peter squeezed her arm, sympathetically.

"I know," he nodded. "I've had several talks with him myself. But he's become crazily suspicious. He told me on the last occasion to mind my own business― music, while he looked after his― astronomy. Then he asked me whether I would let him use the observatory on the roof of the house at Berkeley j Square."

"And what did you say?"

"I refused. Frankly, I didn't want to encourage him in these moon studies. Of course, he stuck out his jaw, told me to go to the devil, and left me. I haven't seen him since."

She touched his hand.

"It was good of you to do that, for my sake," she said. "The last thing I want is to spoil your friendship. Since John has been back at Oxford he's been more and more in company with Professor Carr. Sometimes the Professor comes to our flat and they spend hours poring over photographs of the moon and the many calculations, I'm beginning to dislike Professor Carr," she added.

"Why?"

She hesitated.

"It may be that fixed, superior smile. And sometimes I feel that he is watching me. I suddenly become conscious that someone is staring at me. I turn my head, quickly, only to find him regarding a photograph or listening to some moon gabble from my brother. I suppose it's silly of me."

Peter shook his head.

"No one should be silly about Professor Carr. He's an extraordinary man. I believe I've said that before. And now here we are at your flat."

They had stopped in a quiet side street.

"Won't you come up?" she asked.

He shook his head.

"I'm going to call on Professor Carr," he said. "I want to hear his  gramophone records of the moon."

"You're not becoming crazy about the moon, too?" she asked, concern in her voice.

He laughed.

"I can be crazy in the moonlight," he said, "as you'll discover one evening, when I take you for a walk. But it's not the moon I'm interested in so much as Professor Carr. By the way, is Bretherton still determined to be at Greenwich on September the twelfth?"

She nodded.

"He looks forward to it like a child to a birthday. He's certain to be there. I only wish I could be with him."

Peter reflected.

"Well, there's a possibility that I can do something. There's a ranger's cottage on Blackheath, not far from the Observatory. I've already fixed with the ranger to spend that evening with him. What about coming along?"

Her eyes were dancing. "I'd love to."

For a moment he became sheepish.

"I told the ranger that I might bring my best girl along. He looks upon me as an ordinary sort of fellow who is willing to play the piano in his cottage for the sake of a supper. Which is what I did once before. So if you don't mind coming along as my best girl."

"I don't mind what I am." she replied cryptically. And with a parting smile she passed into the house.

5: The Great Equatoria

"So the music of the spheres has tempted you, after all," laughed Professor Edward Carr, as he greeted his caller.

The sandy-haired young man with the hungry face nodded and gazed round the strange laboratory in which he found himself.

The rooms of Professor Carr were situated in a crumbling ivy-clad Gothic building overlooking the green turfed quadrangle of Magdelen College. A living room, and then a bedroom, opened into the spacious laboratory. The mullioned windows were almost smothered with ivy, and emphasised the medieval atmosphere in which Peter Allister found himself.

The Professor had donned a long white overall. He had something of the grim appearance of a surgeon about to perform an operation. But the heavy, laughing face with 'the deep set eyes beneath a grey thatch of hair, belied any suggestion of the sinister. He led the young man into his laboratory.

If the exterior suggested the retreat of a medieval astrologer, the interior revealed the modern astronomer's workshop, A small telescope pointed vertically to the centre of the dark ceiling. It rested in a circular metal base. Peter looked over the edge of the metal and saw a heavy, sluggish liquid.

"A mercury bath," nodded Professor Carr pleasantly. "I use that telescope purely for photographic work. The lens of the camera is at the bottom. Now, watch!"

He pulled a cord, and a portion of the ceiling slid back, trapdoor fashion. Peter found himself gazing at a small square patch of darkening sky. The telescope nosed towards the opening.

"Through that opening I can photograph almost everything that is happening in the heavens," nodded Professor Carr. "I'll show you some of my collection of pictures later. In the meantime it's the music you want to hear. By the way have you had tea?"

"Thanks, but I could manage drink," retorted Peter.

"You'll find whisky and soda against those shelves," nodded the Professor. "And there should be a clean glass about."

While the Professor was snicking back the slide of the ceiling, Peter approached the bench with its shelves of bottles. He found the whisky and
was helping himself when he became aware that one of the bottles was labelled "silver nitrate." He stared at it, the siphon of soda posed against his hand. At the same time he was conscious that a pair of eyes were regarding him closely.

"Be careful you don't help yourself from the wrong bottle," said the voice of the Professor "We don't want another Allister poisoning himself."

"I've drunk too much of this sort of poison in my time to worry about any other," replied Peter, cheerfully, and squirted a little soda into his liberal helping of whisky.

He discovered the most comfortable chair in the room, and lounged into it. The laboratory, unlike so many scientific dens, appeared highly efficient with everything in its place. Alongside one wall stretched a bench with a few pieces of shining apparatus. Against the walls were various charts of the sky, dark blue patches with their white painted constellations. A sidereal clock, a time map of the world, a radio apparatus and a telephone emphasised the modernity of the astronomer.

"Why the microscope?" asked Peter, pointing to the instrument on the bench.

"Why not?" smiled Professor Carr. "The astronomer of to-day uses a microscope as often as he uses a telescope. Modern science has discovered that the minutest details of matter follow the same ordained course as the spheres in the heavens. The atom, for example, with nucleii― they all revolve round a central body as do our constellations round the sun."

"And the moon?"

"The moon is tied to the earth," said the Professor, "by some strange and inexplicable form of gravity."

"Then there is something about the moon that science has not yet explained?"

"There is a good deal that science has yet to explain," agreed the Professor. "There is the peculiar luminosity of certain craters. Shafts of light, of intense light, have been seen coming from some of those craters, and it is the business of modern astronomy to explain that peculiarity. We shall have to look deep into the craters to discover the secret."

"Might that light be caused by some activity in the craters― human or inhuman?"

Professor Carr gave him a shrewd glance.

"I hope you are not speculating in the same crazy fashion as did your step-brother?"

"I'm only vaguely interested," said Peter, shrugging his shoulders.

"Pah!" The Professor was disappointed. Wait until you hear my moon music."

"I'm waiting," nodded Peter.

The Professor moved over towards the radiogram that was against the comer of the room. With careful hands, he selected a small disc, and placed it upon the turntable. With equal care he selected a fibre needle and fixed it. He spoke over his shoulder to the expectant Peter.

"This record was made by transferring the rays of the moon to a photoelectric cell. They were then changed into sound and recorded. Listen carefully, my young friend!"

Gently, he dropped the needle. It whirred quietly for two seconds. Then, ! to the acute ears of Peter, came a curious sound. It vibrated strangely through that modern laboratory encased in its medieval shell. He tried desperately to analyse the sound, an unearthly one which no musical instrument known could produce. It was like the tolling of large bells which had been deprived of their resonance.

Bells! Wooden bells, being tolled at an even rate. They dinned their way into the brain of Peter Allister. He had the feeling of a man in a hashish dream hearing the muffled note of his own funeral bells. Instinctively he stretched out a hand to grip the solid substance of the chair.

Like a presiding priest at some deeply religious ritual, the huge, powerful back of Professor Carr bent lovingly over that strange moon music. A new note appeared. A booming note, slower than the note of the wooden bells.

It flitted, ghost-like, in the background. Came a knock. A dramatic note, now.

"Knock, knock, knock, booooo!... Knock, knock, knock, booooo ! "

A crescendo of the wooden bells. Almost a frenzy of muffled notes. And the death-like boom crashing through. Then silence, torn only by the whirring needle. The moon music had ended.

In that curious coma to which the strange sounds had reduced him, Peter glimpsed the smiling face of the Professor twisted over a shoulder. There was a mad gleam in the eyes. The grey hair was erect. And a deep chuckle escaped from his throat.

"You've never heard anything like that in your silly concert halls, young man, eh?"

With an effort, Peter Allister recovered himself. The strange lethargy of limbs fell away. He jerked himself from the chair and faced the Professor.

But the unreal, fantastic mask that he had glimpsed for a moment had gone. Instead, there stood before him a white garbed figure smiling rather sympathetically at the bewilderment of the guest.

Peter fumbled for a cigarette.

"A strange experience, Professor," he murmured. "I congratulate you on capturing such an uncanny symphony from the ether. And it has given me an idea for a composition... Good evening, Carr ! "

And with disconcerting alacrity, he made for the door. A strange laugh floated after him.

THE AFTERNOON of September 12th continued a cloudless, sunshine day. On the green slopes of Greenwich Park, overlooking a silver curve of the Thames, nurses sat by prams, a few out-of-works stretched themselves to read straying pieces of yesterday's newspapers, a boy stared with his uncle at the poised statue of Wolfe and asked: "Who was he, any how?" and a few yards away a tired blonde waitress carried teas to people sitting around the kiosk. A placid afternoon scene which might have been duplicated in any London park.

But the scene was anything but placid for Detective Inspector Graves as, with two plain-clothes men he made his way to the gateway leading to the famous observatory. In fact, he regarded it with dire suspicion. He had to restrain himself from peering into prams pushed across his path by cheery, inviting nurse-maids. Bombs and infernal machines' were ever present in his mind.

"Go ahead, inspector, if you don't feel you're making a fool of yourself," the Commissioner of Police had said magnanimously. "But why you should think anyone would want to blow up longitude zero I can't imagine.

"It was a bomb that was used to blow up the observatory of Jena, sir," Graves had replied, sullenly.

"This is England, my dear inspector."

Passing through the heavily built gateway that led to this cluster of domed buildings giving the impression of a series of Mohammedan tombs, Graves was at once taken into the presence of the Astronomer Royal.

"All right, get on with your job,'' Sir James Bennett said. "And please don't disturb us any more than you can help."

"Is the French astronomer, Pierre Kessel, all right, sir?" asked Graves.

Sir James nodded.

"I left him playing in the garden with my two children, ten minutes ago. He arrived at noon, and was a little astonished that in motoring here from Croydon he should have been accompanied by two Scotland Yard men. He asked me if it was usual."

"I hope you said it was, sir."

"I did. He seemed flattered."

And Sir James permitted a smile to cross his stern visage.

"I hope, also," continued Graves, "that my suggestion that no visitors should be shown over the Observatory was acted upon."

"In any case," said Sir James, "visitors are not allowed on the day when any important observations are to be made."

"And nothing unusual happened?" Sir James hesitated.

"The attendant on the gate reports that two men have been prowling about in a suspicious manner."

"Oh! What are these men like?"

Sir James described them. Graves sighed.

"That's all right, sir. They are my own men."

Sir James wanted to curtail the interview, but Graves had one more question to ask.

"Regarding the visitors to-night, sir. Have they all accepted?"

"With the exception of two," nodded Sir James. "Altogether, including Kessel, there will be twelve of us in The Great Equatoria at midnight."

"That is including myself, too, sir, I hope?"

The Astronomer Royal gave a gesture of annoyance.

"No. I had forgotten. That will make thirteen of us."

"An unlucky number, sir."

"I'm not superstitious."

"And none of the guests are invited before eleven o'clock?"

"No."

"My men will check each one carefully as they enter the park," said Graves. "I'm taking no chances tonight."

"I'm afraid you're going to be horribly disappointed," said the Astronomer Royal, turning on his heel and leaving the inspector to his own devices.

Graves called up his two plainclothes companions.

"Search this place, thoroughly," he commanded. "You know what to look for. When you've satisfied yourselves report to me. I'll be in there!"

And he pointed to the domed observatory where The Great Equatoria was to be found.

They slouched away, grumbling cheerfully to each other.

"Like a bloomin' Guy Fawkes night in Parliament," grunted one.

"Just my luck to be picked for a job that will go on until after midnight," growled the other. "My missus wouldn't believe me when I told her this morning. She's threatened to put someone on watching me."

"Women are like that," grunted the other.

In the meantime, Detective Inspector Graves had reached the base of the red brick tower. He carefully circled it. With the stick he carried he prodded every suspicious corner. He found nothing. Then he entered the doorway and began to ascend a circular iron staircase that led towards the observatory proper. Up and up he climbed, stopping every few moments to examine the steps of that twisting staircase.

At last he came to the door leading into the observatory. But before entering he made his way on to a wooden balcony that stretched half-way round the tower. From this height he was able to survey most of the grounds. He could see his two men probing around in an expert manner. Beyond the grounds of the Observatory he caught the glint of sunshine on the Thames.  A white painted German liner was taking stores aboard. A few tug boats fussed up and down. Then Graves saw a black little launch with three men sitting in it. It was cruising slowly up river. A police boat.

Thus satisfied, he opened a door and entered the observatory. The huge dome, with its movable slats, stretched above him. The curved walls were painted a dirty brown colour. Except for a clock, a switchboard for the electric motor, and two switches for the dangling electric lights, the walls were bare. The only furniture consisted of a table, a chair, and the framework of a couch that was placed in readiness beneath the giant telescope.

The Great Equatoria dominated the observatory. The twenty-seven inch telescope was held in position by a framework of latticed steel which gave it the appearance of a huge howitzer ready to be fired. It seemed to nose the domed roof hungrily.

Although the Great Equatoria was the dominant object, Graves ignored it in the beginning. He circled those distempered walls with the cunning of a rat trying to find a way out of the trap. He climbed a balcony which was built inside the observatory, but discovered nothing but a little dust for his pains. Then he examined the motors, switched them on, listened to their steady drone and, satisfied, switched off again.

Finally, he approached the mattress on the couch and thumped it vigorously. Nothing was hidden there. He even stretched himself out on the mattress and applied an eye to the telescope. Everything seemed as it should be. Disappointed, the Scotland Yard man conscientiously began the tour all over again. After another half-hour he was again nonplussed. Then he sat down at the wooden table, and waited.

He watched the sunshine receding across the tiled floor. Distrusting the clock, he took out his own watch. It was nearly, six o'clock.

"And Greenwich Park closes at eight o'clock," he muttered. "Then I can take charge."

There was a knock at the door. The two plain-clothes men were reporting.

"Searched the place thoroughly, sir. Not a suspicious thing about."

"Two oxygen cylinders next to the garage, sir," reported the other. "But that's all."

Graves nodded. A suspicion was dawning in his mind that he had been fooled.

BENEATH the huge moon swinging in the sky, Blackheath gave the appearance of a ghostly landscape. Wisps of mist that might have been wraiths, struggled out of the ground but disappeared in the baleful light of the moon. Away on the western horizon the red glow of London shot towards the sky like a city that had been looted and was burning furiously.

A rabbit, quivering with fright, gazed with green eyes into a shaft of light that came with crunching footsteps on gravel. It was a policeman crossing the Heath and making his way towards Greenwich Park. He laughed softly, snicked off the light, and the rabbit thankfully bobbed away into the darkness.

"Silly little devils!" grunted the policeman to himself.

He crunched forward, majestically. A dark shape loomed before him. It took on substance in the moonlight, and resolved itself into a ranger's cottage. From behind the drawn blinds came the tinkle of a piano. Soft, rippling music. The policeman hesitated for a moment to listen.

"Bah! No tune in it," he decided, disappointedly, and resumed his steady pace towards the road where a lighted 'bus slithered along like a liner seen in the night at sea.

Inside that ranger's cottage, the thin lean hands of Peter Allister brought to an end the Chopin nocturne he had been playing. In his shirt sleeves, pipe in mouth, the ranger sprawled in the chair set alongside the table with its red and white chequered cloth. Arrayed behind him, with the meticulous care of prize exhibits at a shooting gallery, was a Welsh dresser with all the domestic crockery. A blazing fire with a kettle singing softly. A huge black cat, shining like ebony and, at the moment. engaged in intimate ablutions, took full advantage of the fire and a strip of rug.

In the corner nearest to the fire, her greying hair splashed by the electric light, sat the ranger's wife. In her aproned lap she had a bundle of her husband's rough socks. A darning needle was being plied busily.

"Eh, but that's lovely music," she sighed, as the fingers of Peter Allister stilled themselves.

The ranger winked at Peter through a cloud of smoke.

"So you like it, mother, eh?" he asked.

She nodded.

"It reminds me, somehow, of the chapel I used to go to as a girl when I lived in Burnley. Ave. it was a rare treat for a tired lass of a mill-girl to sit in a chapel and hear someone play good music like that there."

"Happen that was before I began courting thee," nodded the ranger.

"It were, father; it were," she nodded placidly.

"I'm afraid he's teasing you, Mrs. Tomlinson," came the laughing voice of Jill Bretherton, who was seated near the piano. The simple yellow frock she wore enhanced her dark beauty.

Mrs. Tomlinson looked up from her darning and gave an affectionate glance at her shirt-sleeved husband.

"John Albert was always a queer one." she said, in her dry, Lancashire accent. "Always too deep for me even when he insisted I marry him. Never could get to the bottom of him."

"So you married me to find out, eh, mother?" asked her husband.

"Happen I did; happen I didn't," was her laconic reply. "But I do remember that you took me away from the chapel to stand with you at the back of the Free Trade Hall in Manchester, listening to a lot of fiddlers scraping away for dear life. Eh, but you were a rare one for the music, lad."

The ranger nodded over his pipe. "There's nowt like it in London," he said, lapsing into dialect as he became reminiscent. "Those were the days when the Halle Orchestra had old Hans Richter conducting. He showed us how Wagner could be played."

"Aye, he played Wagner so well that father must take off his coat and have a fight with a feller outside the Free Trade Hall one night."

"The feller booed after they'd played the Tristan Overture," protested the ranger.

"And you laid him out for it," nodded his wife, a gleam of satisfaction behind her spectacles. "Eh, but I had to run with you that night for fear the policeman would get three."

"That was the night I asked you to marry me, mother," grinned the man.

"And I was so out of breath that you took my gasp for 'Yes,'" she re

There came a sardonic chuckle from Peter Allister at the piano.

"It wasn't the policeman who ran you into marriage, Tomlinson," he said, "but Wagner. The overture from Tristan can do queer things with listeners."

"Aye, there's guts in Wagner," agreed the ranger.

"And a thunder against Fate," went on Peter Allister. "Ever heard the Gotterdammerung, or Twilight of the Gods?" He turned excitedly to Jill, his dark eyes gleaming. "That fool philosopher Spengler took it as his theme for the Decline of the West. It's the despairing theme of all the astronomers now gathering together in Greenwich Observatory to stare at the moon. The universe is like a bubble, about to burst. And then annihilation."

And his hands crashed to the piano in a crescendo of discord.

"Don't, Peter," pleaded the girl.

But he had forgotten her. Out of that crashing discord his nimble fingers conjured furiously the fierce Wagnerian music of Gotterdammerung. With shoulders hunched, in nervous energy, he brought forth that "thunder against Fate" as he had called it. The little, comfortably furnished room of the cottage seemed to reel at the assault. As music boomed forth, the ranger removed his pipe and stared open-mouthed at the player. Jill, tense and distraught, stared down as though obsessed by those fingers writhing and clawing at the keys. Only Mrs. Tomlinson was  untroubled by the onslaught. She continued placidly to darn socks.

With the flourish or an impresario and a sardonic grin on his face, Peter Allister brought the tour de force to a finish. The pink-papered walls seemed to be still echoing the music.

"Eh, but that's rare mad stuff," decided the ranger, stretching out a hand for the matches with which to light the pipe that had gone out.

"It's gloriously mad stuff," agreed Peter.

"It's daft." interjected the woman in the corner. "Like most of you young folks of to-day. Shouting and raging against the world." She gave the two people at the piano a quick glance from her spectacles. "Why don't you two get married?"

The pointed remark caused Jill to flush. That flush spread from her white neck to her cheeks. She was conscious that Peter Allister was regarding her, sardonic as usual but with a strange gleam in his eyes.

"Why don't we get married, Jill?" he added.

The flush deepened.

"I... you've never asked me," she stammered.

"I'm asking you now," said Peter, quietly.

She looked down on this sandy-haired man with the hungry, cynical face. Hunched as he was at the piano, it seemed part of him― something out of which beauty could be conjured. And in that fleeting moment as she saw him with the light gleaming against the back of his head, the aggressive, tempestuous face of the man who had fought recklessly against life, had taken on the beauty of a lover. The hunger was still there, but it was hunger for her. She knew in that moment that he loved her.

But what of herself? She hesitated. She realised that this wayward genius roused the mother instinct in her. And, all the masculinity in him craved for it. Could she give him love, yield to the strong possessive power in him? She liked him. She thrilled, at moments, to those eager glances, to the evident attempts on his part to please her. And there were times when the touch of those strong, nervous fingers seemed to conjure strange music in herself. But still she hesitated.

"Not now, please," she murmured. She shivered slightly, and glanced at the clock. The action caused the others to follow her example.

"Eh, but it's gone eleven o'clock!" exclaimed the ranger, rising from his chair. "Where's my coat, mother? I'm on special duty till one o'clock, observatory. They've surrounded the place with policemen."

His wife hurried forward with his coat.

"Take care of thissel, won't you, father?"

He nodded. Jill also had risen.

"Do... do you think anything will happen to-night?" she asked.

The ranger selected a stout ash stick from the corner.

"With all these policemen about, anything might happen," he growled.

Jill caught her breath, sharply. The ranger's wife put her arm about her.

"Don't be frightened, lass," she said. "Father likes to be a bit of a braggart. But he means well." She turned to her husband. "Maybe you'll telephone us if anything happens."

"Sure I will," nodded the ranger. "But I'm hoping you'll be here when I return."

Jill looked at Peter, who nodded. And the ranger's wife hastened to say:

"I'm just going to make some cocoa for all of us, and I'll see that there's a steaming mug of it for you when you come in."

"And happen there's a sausage roll or two left?" grinned the ranger.

"Happen there is," said his wife. "But get away to thy job. The buzzer's gone."

And with a nod that meant a real wifely adoration, she dismissed him.

With a little chuckle, Peter Allister sat down at the piano again to play.

AS HALF-PAST ELEVEN was recorded by the sidereal clock beneath the dome of the Great Equatoria at Greenwich Observatory, Detective Inspector Graves gazed round at the assembled company with suspicious interest.

The scheme of operations prepared by Scotland Yard was now complete. The park was heavily patrolled by policemen. Four plain-clothes men guarded the only entrance from the outside of the Great Equatoria. Two police launches with radio equipment waited upon the oily surface of the Thames. And from the report just handed to him by a sub-inspector, Graves was confident that not even a black cat would be able to approach the Observatory unseen during the great experiment with the French astronomer, Pierre Kessel, was about to launch.

All the scientists, in evening dress, were talking pleasantly but earnestly in a meaningless gabble so far as the Scotland Yard man was concerned.

"But my dear fellow, you cannot ignore the Newtonian attraction between material objects..."

"Certainly I think this hypothesis of the loss of nebular light is attractive."

This remark was made by the smiling but sceptical Professor Edward Carr, whose huge bulk dominated the group of scientists. "Cher maître, are we to expect an amplification of De Sitter's theories from you to-night?"

Addressed thus, the central figure of this gathering, yet almost lost because of his smallness, Pierre Kessel smiled beneath his ragged black moustache.

"My dear colleagues, I have come here to study, to learn, but not necessarily to expound. If what I see to-night on the lunar surface confirms what I have already seen from the Paris Observatory, then..."

He left the sentence unfinished by a typical Gallic shrug of the shoulders.

"You haf den ein formulae... der I mathematics of der theory?" Dr. Heinmesch, of Zurich, was as pertinacious as ever.

"C'est possible!" murmured the Frenchman with disarming smile.

The Astronomer Royal, Sir James Bennett, moved about with a busy, host-like intensity. The liverish face of the man from Mount Wilson, Edwin Kyne, was thrust forward dogmatically into every group. There was a tigerish purr in his voice.

"It seems to me that astronomers in Europe are in danger of becoming astrologers. There is too much speculation, too much prophecy, and not enough scientific cautiousness. That is what we need― scientific cautiousness"

"But if der mathematics are sound―" Heinmesch, of Zurich, was entering the tiger's lair.

With ears attuned but understanding little of this gabble, Detective Inspector Graves prowled on the edge of each little group. Then came a phrase that caused him to stiffen.

"I am a detective In search of a criminal," a voice said, lazily. It was John Bretherton, dark-haired, slightly sceptical but obviously excited as the hour of the experiment approached.

"And who, or what, is the criminal?" challenged Professor Carr.

Graves hung upon the reply.

"The cosmical constant," replied Bretherton, disappointedly. "I know this criminal exists in spherical space, but I do not know his appearance. Is he a little man or a tall man?"

"Of course, there are footprints," chuckled Carr, who had just glimpsed the bewildered face of the detective.

"You can judge something of the appearance of your criminal from the recession of the spiral nebulae."

Bretherton nodded, understandingly. Graves edged forward a little.

"That is so, Carr. And I can now turn to my other clues-in relativity and wave mechanics-and by checking one against the other I think I have now about enough evidence to justify an arrest."

With a gesture of his powerful hand, Carr indicated the Scotland Yard man.

"Well, here's a man who wants to arrest a criminal. Isn't that so, inspector?"

With faces twisted towards him, Graves found himself in the limelight.

"Is your criminal a murderer!" he asked Bretherton, bluntly.

Bretherton gave the detective a smile.

"A very dangerous murderer, Graves. It is possible that one day he will commit mass murder to such an extent that there won't be a soul alive in this world to tell the tale of his misdeeds."

"And his name?"

It almost seemed that Graves was about to produce his notebook.

"I've already told you: the cosmical constant," was Bretherton's reply, and in the laugh that went up the detective slunk away to another group.

"Gentlemen― gentlemen!" The Astronomer Royal's voice was pitched above the general hum of conversation. The groups turned towards him. "In a quarter of an hour it will be midnight. I think we should begin our preparations. The conditions for lunar study are, to-night, excellent. Our distinguished colleague from Paris asks permission for five minutes' study of the moon's surface after which he has promised to give us a short talk on the results of those observations. And now, Monsieur Kessel, the Great Equatoria is at your disposal.

A polite murmur of applause rose from the assembled scientists as Pierre Kessel came forward. He made a bow, and then nodded to the Astronomer Royal.

"The dome, please!"

At this command, two scientists stepped forward to grasp the dangling loops of rope from the silver dome. One of the scientists was Bretherton; the other the Astronomer Royal himself. They tugged like bellringers at the ropes.

A rumbling sound came from above. Detective Inspector Graves lifted his head. The silver dome was splitting open revealing a black slicing of sky.

"And now the motor, please!"

Another scientist jerked at the switches. The humming sound of electricity working other vents in the dome could be heard. The night air seemed to splash in upon the assembled scientists. With the cautiousness of age, Professor Edward Carr slipped an overcoat over his shoulders.

"I think you will find the telescope adjusted at the right elevation, Monsieur Kessel," said the Astronomer Royal.

With a sudden agile movement the Frenchman stretched himself on the mattress. He applied an eye to the telescope and, instinctively, stretched out a hand to take hold of a long pole at his side by which the elevation could be manoeuvred at will.

"It is... as you say... perfect," came the calm voice of the man on the mattress. "And when I give the signal, the lights will be turned off, hein?"

In those few seconds of light that remained to him. Detective Inspector Graves observed the position of everyone in that circular observatory.

The Frenchman prone beneath the huge telescope. Six feet away from him a little group of scientists that included Edwin Kyne and Dr. Heinmesch. On the little raised platform with almost the air of an impresario, stood the Astronomer Royal, looking down upon the arrangements. Professor Edward Carr stood by the electric light switches, one hand ready,

Another group of scientists stood nearer to the Frenchman. John Bretherton was among them, and leaning forward, eagerly. Quietly, Inspector Graves shuffled his way into this group.

"Allons!"

The Frenchman snapped out his command, professor Carr jerked the switches and a blanket of darkness fell upon the Great Equatoria. That darkness brought a sudden shuffling of feet. Graves found himself hemmed in. He put out his hand and touched a figure that seemed to twist away from it. He jerked up his head and saw the huge, silver-like globe of the moon peering like a baleful eye through the dome.

But even as this uncanny object came to his vision, a piercing scream suddenly rent the darkness. It seemed to echo within that domed room and slobbered away into a moan. A scream to chill the hearts of all who stood there.

Graves pushed forward. A moving figure lurched against him. The Scotland Yard man seized it, and held on grimly despite the struggles. At the same time he found his own voice.

"The lights... the lights, damn you!"

But even as he yelled, the lights came on, Professor Carr was standing by the switches. The scientists, huddled like sheep were blinking in frightened fashion.

"Let me go!"

The form that Graves had seized was still struggling. It was the young man, Bretherton. And with a sudden twist he evaded the detective and rushed towards the figure of the Frenchman lying on the mattress.

In two strides Graves was with him. They stared down upon a horrible vision. Through the silk-pleated shirt of the Frenchman a dagger had been plunged deeply. Already blood was staining the whiteness. Pierre Kessel's face was stamped with an agonising expression. The mouth was open, to let forth that last piercing scream. And down his jaw trickled a line of blood.

"Dead!" commented the detective, after one glance. "Close the doors!"

Professor Carr placed his huge bulk against the only exit.

Bretherton was gazing with fascinated eyes at the dead Frenchman.

"The moon kills," he muttered aloud.

Graves gave him a quick glance.

"This time it is man that kills... with a knife," he snarled. "And the murderer is here― or outside."

Quickly, he strode to the door that led to the balcony, surrounding the tower. Standing there, he produced a police whistle from his pocket and blew three shrill blasts. Then he came back into the observatory.

"The whole place is surrounded," he said, commandingly. "And now we're going to find the murderer."

He gazed round at the frightened group of white faces before him. His gaze came to rest upon the dark, handsome features of Bretherton. The young scientist was still gazing in obsessed fashion at the twisted body of the murdered Frenchman.

Five minutes later a ranger entered a telephone box on the edge of Blackheath. A voice, feminine and fraught with anxiety came in response to his 'Hailing.

"Yes. what is it?"

"A Frenchman killed in the observatory. Dagger through his heart. All the police closing in on the observatory."

At the other end of the line, Jill Bretherton dropped the receiver with a moan. Peter Allister hastened towards her.

"Pierre Kessel... murdered," she gasped.

Peter's mouth set in a cruel, determined line.

"MOST DISTRESSING... terrible!"

The Astronomer Royal was shocked. The calm, scientific atmosphere of Greenwich Observatory seemed to have been stampeded into chaos by the police. And the corpse of the famous French astronomer still stained the floor of the Great Equatoria.

Actually, despite the chill of failure within him, Detective Inspector Graves who had taken command, was conducting an inquiry with commendable restraint and promptitude. Several men, including the Divisional Surgeon, had entered that domed observatory within fifteen minutes of Pierre Kessel screaming his death cry. Some of those men who had entered were plain-clothes detectives They regarded the group of scientists who had not been permitted to leave, with definite suspicion.

"The knife penetrated the heart to the extent of an inch," reported the Divisional Surgeon. "Death must have been almost instantaneous."

"It was," said Graves, laconically.

"I'm practically certain, sir," reported another plain-clothes man, "that there aren't any finger-prints on the handle of the knife. Whoever struck must have used gloves."

"That would be easy enough in that first darkness," nodded Graves.

"And the blow was a powerful one," added the Divisional Surgeon. "It was delivered with almost fiendish strength."

"And the knife?" asked the detective.

It was carried to him laid across a white cloth. The shining blade was still smeared with blood.

"You will notice," pointed out the Divisional Surgeon, "that it is very like a surgeon's scalpel. A scientific blade, in short, which might be used for purposes of dissection. And whoever used it had some knowledge of anatomy. The blade was plunged right towards the heart."

"Yes, it's a scientific murder," agreed Graves bitterly. "Without even fingerprints to help us."

A gleam came into his eyes. He beckoned to the plain-clothes man who was holding the knife on the white cloth to stand at his side. Then he raised his voice to address the scientists who were gathered in a muttering throng occasionally giving scared glances over their shoulders at the murdered astronomer on the mattress.

"Gentlemen!" he began, in his matter-of-fact voice. "I would like each of you to take a look at this knife with which the murder was committed by someone in this room, if any of you have seen the knife before, or one like it, I will be obliged if you will pay."

He turned to the Astronomer Royal. "Perhaps you, Sir James, will begin the examination?"

Sir James Bennett, still in a state of distress, gave a shuddering glance at the knife

"A scientific scalpel," he nodded. "We have two or three in this Observatory."

"Are any of them missing?" snapped Graves.

''I couldn't say," stammered Sir James. "I really couldn't say. It would take time to tell you that."

"Perhaps some other gentleman will be able tell us more," said Graves. "Please examine it."

He thrust the white cloth towards John Bretherton, who gave it a quick glance and turned away.

"Well ?" asked Graves.

"I've never seen it before," muttered the young man.

The other scientists filed past. Some had to use trembling fingers to adjust spectacles or pince-nez. To many of them it was an ordinary scientific tool used in laboratory work. The majority of them sighed with relief after the perfunctory examination of the murderous weapon.

Only one man showed real scientific curiosity. That was Professor Edward Carr. His keen, heavy face with its mass of leonine grey hair bent towards the knife with interest. His hand stretched out to pick it up from the white cloth.

"Don't touch it!" commanded Graves.

Professor Carr regarded him with surprise.

"May I ask why?" he countered.

"Because there may be finger-prints on it," said Graves.

"I see." The professor smiled. "It would have been awkward for me if I had touched it, eh?"

"It might," replied Graves. "But tell me, please. Do you recognise the knife?"

Professor Carr regarded the shining, stained object carefully. There was silence in the room for some seconds. Then he sighed.

"No, I'm sorry I can't help you, Inspector."

He moved away, produced a cigarette case from his pocket, and calmly lit one. He sat on the edge of the platform, regarding the scene placidly through a little haze of cigarette smoke.

The displaying of the knife had revealed nothing. Graves admitted as much to himself, savagely. He stared at those learned faces, nearly all of them as white as the shirt-fronts that bulged beneath. In that moment of perplexity, he hated them. He determined to play his trump card.

"Well, gentlemen," he began again, sardonically. "I want you to be patient with me. I must now ask that each one of you be searched."

"Searched!" The Astronomer Royal came forward at this suggestion. "But this is an outrage, inspector. I can assure you that I personally will answer for every scientist invited here this evening. Each one possesses the highest scientific qualifications and―"

"And yet one of them is a murderer, Sir James," interposed the Scotland Yard man, bluntly. "It is impossible for the murder to have been committed except by someone in this observatory."

"But to search each of us, individually," protested Sir James Bennett. "Surely, inspector, that is carrying your official duties towards a dangerous point."

"To have a murderer loose in our midst is much more dangerous, Sir James."

The Astronomer Royal fell back, still muttering.

"May I ask. inspector," came a calm voice from behind the cigarette, "what you expect to find by searching us?"

Graves turned in the direction of Professor Carr.

"I'll be frank with you all," he said "I'm looking for a pair of gloves. The murderer, whoever he was, wore a pair of gloves on his hands, in order that no finger-prints should be left on the knife."

Professor Can' nodded, and smiled from behind his little screen of smoke.

"Then there are no finger-prints on the knife?"

"So far as we can see, none," admitted Graves. "But someone here has a pair of gloves with which the murder was committed. Now, gentlemen, who will be the first to offer himself to be searched."

Professor Carr rose lazily.

"I see your point, inspector. At the same time, I agree with Sir James Bennett that the whole business is an outrage. Nevertheless, I will set the example. I'm ready to be searched."

And with a smile he stood in front of Graves, extending his arms.

Graves nodded to one of his men. Quickly, but expertly, the pockets of the Oxford savant were emptied. No gloves were revealed. With a nod at the muttered apology, Professor Carr went back to his platform seat, where he could resume his cigarette and an observance of the scene.

Other scientists followed, including the Astronomer Royal. Still there was no sign of gloves. Almost the last to be searched was John Bretherton. The searcher's hand went to the hip pocket of the young man and struck something hard.

"Cigarette case?" asked the searcher. "You'd better make sure," said Bretherton.

The searcher did. His hand came away from the pocket holding an automatic pistol. He thrust it before the narrowing eyes of Graves.

"A queer thing to bring to an astronomy lecture?" queried Graves, quietly.

"I suppose it is," said Bretherton, white-faced, but defiant. The Scotland Yard man snicked it open and carefully examined the cartridges. Not one had been fired.

"May I ask why you brought this sun here to-night?" pursued Graves.

Bretherton hesitated.

"I really can't say." Habit, I suppose."

The eyebrows of Graves raised themselves at this.

"Habit? To go out in evening dress with a gun in your hip-pocket? Come, Mr. Bretherton, we're not playing a part in a film drama, you know.''

Bretherton's mouth twitched uneasily.

"Well, I'll be frank with you, Graves I expected murder would be committed here to-night."

"Really?"

The Scotland Yard man was regarding the young scientist closely.

Bretherton continued:

"Ever since that night when Phillip Allister died at the telescope, I've suspected that the next scientist with the declared intention of making observations on the moon would also die. Because I suspected that something might happen, I brought that automatic pistol along with me."

Graves appeared to be weighing the pistol in his hand.

"This sort of weapon makes a big noise when used," he said, in that matter-of-fact tone.

"I hadn't a chance to save Kessel," blurted out Bretherton. "Just as I was going forward to help him, I blundered into some fool who held me."

"I happened to be holding you, Mr. Bretherton," said Graves, calmly "And for the moment I'll take care of this. By the way, have you a licence?"

"No," admitted Bretherton.

"I thought not." nodded the detective. "Thank you, that will do."

By one o'clock in the morning, the search was finished. And still no pair of gloves had been found. Graves felt himself baffled. But there came a knock at the closed door of the Great Equatoria. On opening it, a constable was seen standing there

"Beg pardon, sir." he said, saluting Graves "But I just found this lying on the ground."

And he held forth a brown kid glove.

Graves pounced on it. He examined it closely. It was a man's glove and of foreign make. The dramatic interruption had caused the scientists to group round the detective.

"That's odd!"

Tine detective swivelled round. "Odd! What d'you mean?"

Professor Carr took the kid glove in the palm of his own hand.

"This looks like the type of glove worn by Pierre Kessel." he said. "He's a Frenchman, of the conventional type Wore gloves on ceremonial occasions. When I met him this evening he was wearing gloves."

"That's right. Carr," nodded the Astronomer Royal. "I recall his gloves. Faddish, I thought it."

Snatching the glove. Graves strode to the body of the murdered astronomer. His nimble fingers searched the dead man's dinner jacket. They came forth holding a second glove, identical with the one found at the foot of the tower. They were a pair.

"He must have dropped it when he was entering the Great Equatoria,'' suggested the Astronomer Royal.

"He may have done," said Graves, still regarding the picked-up glove. At the same time, this glove was worn by the murderer. There is blood on it, and it is split."

"And what are we to deduce from the split glove, Inspector?" drawled Professor Carr

"That the murderer picked it up or filched it to put on to conceal his finger prints. But his hand was much bigger than the Frenchman's. The glove split. When it had served its purpose, the murderer threw it towards the moon. It went through the opening of the dome and tumbled to the earth below."

"A gage flung to the moon," nodded Professor Carr. "A fine gesture."

And then in tired fashion he yawned.

6: The Moon Goddess

THE MURDER of the French astronomer, Pierre Kessel, within that scientific sanctuary of Greenwich Observatory, was featured in the sensational fashion it deserved by most newspapers. To Detective Inspector Graves, moody and perplexed in his little room at Scotland Yard, there was too much sensationalism in the details.

None of the newspapers had forgotten to emphasise that the Observatory had been surrounded by the police and that the whole of Greenwich Park had been patrolled until the early hours of the morning. Yet through this cordon, as one London newspaper said, "a killer had stalked sought out his victim, and escaped." That flamboyant piece of journalism had been on the Commissioner's desk and was thumped vigorously while Detective Inspector Graves had respectfully presented his report.

"Murder by the moon, or because of the moon, is just nonsense." insisted the Commissioner. "Something has got to be done about it. I had a messenger from the Foreign Office here an hour ago. It seems the Quai d'Orsay are asking if there are any political motives behind the crime."

"I'm sorry, sir."

"Being sorry isn't enough inspector. I want results."

"We're dealing with a very clever and scientific murderer, sir."

The Commissioner twisted his moustache in an irritated fashion.

"There's another complaint we have to face. I'm told by Sir James Bennett, the Astronomer Royal, that you insisted upon a search of several distinguished scientists who were present at this unfortunate affair."

"One of those scientists is the murderer, sir," said Graves, doggedly.

The Commissioner hunched his shoulders.

"Well, it beats me. Someone takes a look through a telescope at the moon, and dies. Where's the motive?"

"If I could only decide upon the motive, sir, it would be easy enough to find the man."

"But you haven't even a shred of evidence."

"The motive would be sufficient to lead me to the murderer, sir."

The Commissioner gave the impression that he was dealing with a pigheaded individual. He sighed, and picked up his pen.

"All right, get back to it. But remember, inspector, we want results quickly."

"Yes, sir."

And with cold fury in his heart, Detective Inspector Graves returned to his little room overlooking the Embankment.

Constable Browne had just deposited a batch of marked French newspapers on his desk. They gave varying and highly inaccurate reports of the case. The phrase "Une crime sinistre" was repeated with Gallic inevitability throughout. Le Petit Journal discovered a connection between the murder at Greenwich Observatory and the Stavisky affair. L'lntransageant recalled that the real assassins of King Alexander were still at large and suggested that Scotland Yard should examine the group of Yugoslavians who had recently entered Britain.

Inspector Graves sighed and turned to Le Matin, which in a special article rumoured that the great Frenchman, Pierre Kessel had discovered the secret of the Death Ray, and had been lured to England by secret service agents there to be foully murdered by Nazis to whom he had refused to divulge his great discovery. Even Le Figaro thought it time that Britain broke up the Communist movement that was spreading among young hotheads to whom assassination was part of their policy.

Graves thrust the bundle of papers aside with a few choice oaths. But even as he did so, his eye alighted upon a blurred but unmistakable photograph of the murdered scientist walking in the grounds of Greenwich Observatory. "By telephoto service from London" the picture was announced. Yet the fact that Pierre Kessel was smiling in the presence of two familiar confrerés was the fact of the detective's interest. He picked up the newspaper for a closer look at that photograph. Pierre Kessel was standing between the Astronomer Royal, Sir James Bennet, and Professor Edward Carr, "the distinguished savant of Oxford University who recently collaborated in the Paris observatory with the late lamented."

That blurred picture began a train of thought in the mind of the Scotland Yard man. He recalled the suggestion of his sardonic visitor, Peter Allister, in this room some days previously, something about a coincidence if one of those guests at the death party had been present in New York, Jena and Cambridge when the other moon observers died.

Graves pulled towards him the list of the scientists who had been present in the Great Equatoria when Pierre Kessel died. He also rang a bell and the imperturbable Constable Browne materialised.

"Browne, I want you to get me the dossiers of the moon murder cases at New York, Jena and Cambridge.

"I have them sir. Except for the

Cambridge affair, there are not many details."

Graves frowned.

"Then request Information Department to get me the names of all, particularly those scientists who gave evidence in each of the cases at Jena and New York."

"It will take time, sir."

"Telephone then."

"To New York, sir?"

"Of course." Graves decided he was getting his own back with the Commissioner. "And have them ready for me here this evening. Having snapped out these commands, Graves reached for his bowler hat.

"Will you be away long, sir?" ventured Constable Browne.

"I'm going to Oxford," replied Graves. "I believe that is where the extraordinary young man. Peter Allister. is reported to be staying at the moment?"

Constable Browne gave a glance at a slip of paper on the detective's desk.

"He's residing at the Sceptre Hotel, sir."

Graves nodded.

"An excellent place for lunch, I believe. I'll be back this evening. See that Information get busy, Browne."

"Very good, sir."

And with the air of a fox terrier sniffing the scent, Detective Inspector Graves padded out of the room.

Two hours later he was walking the High at Oxford, gazing disapprovingly at the youthful students whose sports jackets and grey flannels flaunted a contrast to the crumbling grey Gothic background. It was the enthusiastic indifference of youth to the ponderous seriousness of age.

And the Scotland Yard man found the atmosphere of the Sceptre Hotel even more annoying. Two black satined sylphs at the reception desk ignored his presence entirely. In between patting blonde curls they discussed the merits of Clark Gable.

"I think he's lovely."

"I think he's lousy."

"Says you! You're jealous."

Such talk in the heart of Oxford appalled Inspector Graves. His London County Council school education was affronted. His innate English conservatism was affronted.

"I wish to see Mr. Peter Allister," he began, severely.

"Now my idea of a man is William Powell," resumed one blonde. ''There's a gentleman for you!"

"Mr. Peter Allister, please," insisted Graves.

For the first time they were aware of him.

"Who's he?" asked one of the girls. Graves, with difficulty, restrained his temper.

"A gentleman who is staying here."

"Oh, is he?"

There was a general search for that name on a board and in the visitors' book.

"He may be at lunch or he may be in number twenty-seven," decides one of the girls. "Anyhow, he's somewhere about." And then, with fervour, she turned to the other black satined sylph. "William Powell's okay, but what about Gary Cooper. Don't you like the way he smiles― so lovely and..."

Graves left them to their discussion, plunged through a lounge where more young men in sports coats, checks, and flannel trousers chattered loudly over pewter mugs, and entered the dining room. It was empty, save for a sad eyed head waiter, who blinked expectantly like an awakened owl.

Retreating, the Scotland Yard man climbed some protesting stairs, whose walls were covered with hunting and coaching pictures, while copper receptacles littered the landings. He found room number twenty-seven, turned the handle of the door and boldly entered. It was empty, except for suit-cases, a gramophone and the general paraphernalia of music-books and score which Allister had collected during his sojourn in Oxford.

A torn scrap of paper on a small writing-table attracted the attention of Graves. He picked it up. It had been torn from a diary. Scrawled across it was a series of figures and diagrams. The Scotland Yard man puzzled over it. It read:

Except for the preliminary sign of the crescent moon the message was incomprehensible to Graves. He slipped the piece of paper in his pocket.

Even as he did so, a quiet voice came from the door, which had silently opened.

"Good afternoon, Inspector."

Graves turned quickly. The tall, athletic figure of Professor Edward Carr was regarding him. There was a strange smile on that intellectual face surmounted by the grey, leonine hair.

"Good afternoon, professor," rejoined Graves, calmly.

"I hope I'm not disturbing you," said Carr, pointedly. "I was looking for a young friend, Peter Allister. I was told that this was his room."

Graves nodded.

"I was looking for him myself," he replied. "Maybe you can tell me where he is?"

The professor hesitated, and then placed his cap and gloves on a chair.

"Half an hour ago," he drawled, "I met that charming young lady, Jill Bretherton, in whom Allister takes such an inordinate and enthusiastic interest. She told me that Allister had decided to go to London to-day, and as I was driving my car down there, I thought he might appreciate a lift. But as he is not here I gather he must have already gone by train."

"That's a pity," said Graves, seating himself on the bed. "I particularly wished to talk to that young man."

"Still hunting for murderers?" asked Carr, with a disarming smile.

"I feel I'm near to my man," replied Graves, cautiously.

"Dear me," said Professor Carr, raising his eyebrows. "And in Oxford, too. Surely you're not serious, inspector?"

"I'm always serious," said Graves.

"A great pity," sighed the professor. "A sense of humour is so helpful. But I sympathise with you that the journey from Scotland Yard to Oxford should have been so fruitless. Now, if I hadn't been going to London it would have given me the greatest pleasure to have shown you through some of the colleges."

"That's good of you, Professor Carr," said Graves, slowly. "But you can be of service to me."

"How?"

"By taking me back to London in your car."

The professor smiled.

"But of course, I'll be delighted. Let me warn you, I drive fast."

"The sooner I reach London the better."

"Excellent," said Professor Carr. "With you at my side. Inspector, I can ignore police traps. And maybe when we reach London you'll reciprocate my suggestion."

"What is that?"

"Show me over Scotland Yard."

Graves nodded, a grim expression on his face.

"I'll be delighted. professor."

He rose from the bed. Carr picked up his cap and driving gloves. They passed out of the room. Graves closing the door. The head waiter with the mournful expression sighed as they walked past the dining-room. So did Detective Inspector Graves. He was hungry.

But he was also on duty.

The Alfa Romeo racing car drawn up in the High was painted a wicked looking red. The Scotland Yard man eyed it askance. Professor Carr laughed, and grasped Graves familiarly by the arm.

"Does it surprise you, inspector, that a professor of astronomy should have a weakness for a fast car? It's a hobby of mine. Speed is one of the few excitements left to our generation."

Graves ensconced himself in the seat alongside the driver.

"I've already decided that you're an extraordinary man, professor," he replied. "What can you do in this ?"

"A comfortable ninety," smiled the professor, taking his place at the wheel. "But I have reached a hundred and ten."

"Well, don't depend upon me getting you through police traps," nodded Graves.

Professor Carr switched on the ignition. The Alfa Romeo rumbled with power. A snick of the gears, and they were away with a howl. They nosed swiftly through the traffic, and two minutes later were on the main road to London.

The professor's well-shod foot went down on the accelerator. The Alfa Romeo leaped forward. A blast of wind almost choked the man from Scotland Yard, and he was dimly aware of the green streak of fields and hedges that they passed in a noisy surge. The grey ribbon of road came leaping towards them.

Soon he was able to admire the deft manipulation of the professor. Fine, taut hands at the wheel. Eyes half closed but alert. Occasionally he stretched out a hand to the brake, gently. Then he would unleash the monster again, and the spidery finger would swing over against the revolutions dial. Professor Carr was a superb driver, swift but confident.

Once when they had slowed down in response to a traffic signal, Graves found an opportunity to shout above the rush of wind.

"Do you always drive at this speed, professor?"

Carr nodded, without taking his gaze from the road.

"Always, when there is important business at the other end."

"I can only imagine, then, that your business in London on this occasion is extremely important."

The professor smiled.

"It is― very. And yours?"

"Very," agreed Graves.

It seemed only a matter of minutes before the red brick suburbs of London were tumbling towards them. The professor nosed the Alfa Romeo into the congested traffic stream, leaving everything behind and yet manoeuvring the racing car with perfect ease, and acceleration at the right moment. The brown sprawling mass of London flashed by. Snicking his gears noiselessly, the professor brought the racing car into the West End.

"Scotland Yard, I suppose?" he asked.

"If I'm not delaying you for your appointment," replied Graves.

The professor gave a chuckle that seemed rather like the deep-seated power of the Alfa Romeo.

"My business is important," he said, "but not urgent. I'm going to take you at your word and look over the building which is supposed to terrify the ordinary criminal."

Graves nodded.

"You're right there, professor. We only terrify the ordinary criminal."

They speeded down Whitehall, the professor swung over the wheel and the next moment they drew up in the yard alongside a group of Flying Squad vans.

"You can park here in safety," smiled Graves. "Come up into my room."

A little stiff from his crouching position in the Alfa Romeo, he led the way up the stairs and towards his own badly-furnished room. Ashe entered, Constable Browne gaped with astonishment at his quick return. But Graves, who had been carrying his bowler hat throughout the journey, deposited it on the rack, indicated a chair to Professor Carr, and took a seat at his desk.

"The reports you asked for, as complete as possible, are on your deck, sir," said Constable Browne.

"Good," nodded Graves. "If you will spare me one moment, professor, while I glance at these papers."

"Of course, my dear inspector. Of course. May I smoke?"

And he settled himself with athletic ease in the chair feeing Graves.

The Scotland Yard man gave a quick glance through the papers. The first name to meet his gaze vas that of the individual sitting opposite him.

New York reports by radio telephone that the astronomer Dr. Rudolph Mayer found dead at his telescope last year had been visited three days previously in his observatory by two European colleagues― Professor Edward Carr, of Oxford, and Enrico Bartesso, of Milan.

Graves turned to his second report.

Jena reports by telephone that Hans Engels was killed by an explosion of a bomb in his observatory. A Communist plot is suspected. No arrests made. Two assistants were injured. The only scientific name associated with Hans Engels is that of the famous astronomer, Dr. Heinmesch, of Zurich. They were corresponding on purely astronomical matters.

The Scotland Yard man sighed, and turned to the third report.

Cambridge police headquarters report that the suicide of Walter Stanmore, of the University, occurred three days after a lecture by Professor Edward Carr, of Oxford. Death was by poison, self-administered. Headquarters are satisfied that it was a case of suicide, although in deference to the University authorities the affair was kept as quiet as possible.

Gazing into the queer, neutral eyes of the man at the other side of the desk, Graves considered the evidence. Professor Edward Carr was in New York when an astronomer studying the moon was found dead. He was at Cambridge when another moon observer died. But what of Jena? Up to this point everything had been coincidence.

"By the way, professor," he said, easily, "do you remember an observatory being bombed at Jena some months ago?"

Carr nodded through a haze of cigarette smoke.

"Yes, it happened last April. Poor Hans Engels was killed. A great loss to astronomical science."

"Are you quite certain of the date last April―" asked Graves, quietly.

The professor gave a smile.

"Quite certain. You see I was giving a lecture before the Royal Society in London on 'Aspects of Cosmogony,' and I distinctly remember being shown a telegram that had just arrived after the meeting with the sad news of Engels' death. Yes, it was a sad occasion for all of us that night. But why do you ask?"

Graves dismissed the question. He again had that chill which suggested he was on the wrong trail.

"Nothing. Just an idea," he murmured. "Well, I'll take you on a tour of Scotland Yard, professor," he added, with a smile. "I hope you won't be bored."

"On the contrary, I'm thrilled," smiled the professor.

"Then we'll begin with the Black Museum," said Graves, rising from his chair. "Rather a grim collection of exhibits― knives, revolvers, bits of rope. The usual weapons of murderers."

"How clumsy they sound," smiled Carr. going towards the door.

Graves ushered him into the passage. Then he suddenly remembered the piece of paper that he had found in the bedroom of Peter Allister at Oxford.

He called to Constable Browne.

"Just ask the Cipher Department to look at this," he commanded.

"Yes, sir."

Then Graves rejoined the professor.

They began the visitor's tour of Scotland Yard.

PETER ALLISTER was within a few hundred yards of his luxurious Mayfair home in Berkeley Square. Yet, if that butler, whose superior attitude had caused Peter to abandon the house, had seen his new master at that moment, his deepest suspicions would haw been confirmed.

Peter was in the greasy, ill-fitting clothes of the gutter. A stained suit that had seen better days was buttoned tightly across his lean frame. A rakish cap concealed the sardonic features. And when he rushed forward to open the door of a taxi-cab that had drawn into the gutter, he had all the appearance of one of London's lost hundreds.

But his rebellious attitude towards life was still present. He spat contemptuously as he regarded the two copper coins in his palm. They had been given to him, grudgingly, by a man in evening-dress who had just stepped out of the taxi and disappeared into a doorway.

"Tuppence!" growled Peter. "When fellers in evening-dress carry coppers about with them it's a sure sign that we live in an age of democracy."

"Bloomin' socialist, ain't you?" grinned the taxi-driver. "Anyhow, you did better'n me. I didn't even get a tip. So long, matey!"

And with a savage grinding of gears, the taxi lumbered away.

Peter Allister cringed into the shadows as a policeman paced solemnly along the pavement. The policeman was in a reflective mood. No need for sharp observation in Half Moon Street. This Mayfair trench was eminently respectable. Modernised Georgian, houses displayed the brass plates of a few medical surgeons. Some of the tall houses had been converted into bachelor flats, sufficiently expensive to possess a respectable clientele. A discreet hotel, an old-fashioned wine merchant and the flanking barrier of a wealthy Christian Science Church emphasised the quiet luxury of Half Moon Street. So the policeman let his thoughts stray to the possibilities of buying a highly decorative suite of furniture for the front room upon which his wife had set her heart.

As he padded away towards Piccadilly, Peter came out of the shadows. He fumbled in the pocket of his greasy coat and brought forth a watch. Eleven o'clock. Three cars had parked themselves at the end of the street. Peter gave a glance at a rather ornate fanlight over a door, dimly lighted. It showed the number 80.

"This looks like the place," he muttered, to himself. "But there's still half an hour to go."

He perked up eagerly as another car swung into Half Moon Street. It glided to rest outside number 80. With the alacrity of his kind, Peter seized the handle of the car door and swung it open. A tall, monocled woman emerged, a jade cigarette holder between her teeth. As her dark cloak fell apart it revealed a dress of shimmering silver. A pale, decadent man with black hair plastered across his head like a wig, followed her.

"Thank you, lady. Thank you, sir," whined Peter, hopefully.

"Go to the devil," said the pale-faced man, and walked hurriedly to the steps leading to the doorway of number 80. The uniformed chauffeur grinned, and the car glided away. Muttering an oath, Peter slunk back into the shadows, but not before he had observed the bell pushed three times when the door silently opened. It closed equally silently as soon as the couple had stepped inside. Listening intently in the darkness, Peter heard a peculiar high-pitched whine coming from the house.

"A lift!" he decided. "And going up. I always imagined those sort of people went below ground for their pleasures. These people are going towards the roof."

He shuffled across the road and regarded number 80 from that perspective. A tall house of Georgian design, it differed very slightly from others in Half Moon Street. And the topmost storey was either unoccupied or heavily curtained. Not a glimmer of light shone there.

Yet, even as he contemplated it, another little group of people arrived on foot outside the house, gave three rings, waited in solemn quietness for the door to swing open, and then stepped inside.

"If this is a Mayfair gambling den, it's a very solemn and nasty looking crowd that is arriving tonight," said Peter to himself.

So far. all the callers had been in evening dress.. Then a taxi chugged alongside and deposited three burly men in dark suits. Their ominous appearance decided Peter to remain in the shadows. They also rang and disappeared into the house. The faint, whining sound followed a minute later.

"Interesting!" murmured Peter, shivering slightly in the night air.

He opened the door of another cab out of which came two heavy blondes chattering in German to each other. One of them thrust a coin into his hand. Only when they had disappeared into number 80 did he discover that it was a mark.

"I'd have made more money playing my piano," he murmured. "But, of course, I would have been moved on."

For the policeman was once again pacing the street, indifferently. He did not even look at number 80, as he passed. He also ignored the shrinking figure of Peter Allister.

By twenty minutes past eleven, the watcher had seen some thirty people enter that house. A motley collection, pallid young men, smartly dressed young men, heavy eyed old men, overdressed, middle-aged women. And each one of them pressed the bell, distinctly, three times.

Twenty-five minutes past eleven.

"I'll risk it," decided Peter, tugging the cap towards his eyes.

He gave a glance round. Half Moon Street was deserted. He ascended the steps and pressed the bell, firmly, three times. Then he squared his shoulders, Silently, the door opened. He stepped inside. There was nobody there. He stood in a well-carpeted hall, dimly lit, revealing a chair, a hall-stand and a heavily-gilt framed landscape in the nineteenth century style. All very discreet and ordinary. Peter half expected a trim maid to appear and ask his business. Instead, there came a loud click. He started. But it was a lift at the end of the passage that seemed to await him. He stared at the empty lift behind the steel grille. It possessed a sinister invitation. Even as he hesitated, somewhere in the distance a bell shrilled three times. Peter swung round. The door had opened. A young, pallid-faced woman in a bright green evening dress was entering. She gave him a casual nod, twitched open the steel grille of the lift and stepped inside.

"Are you coming up?" she asked, in a tired, husky voice.

"Of course," nodded Peter, and stepped forward.

The grille was closed. The woman in the green dress pressed a button, and the automatic lift began its ascent with that loud whine which Peter had heard from the pavement. The woman standing by the side of Peter, sighed.

"I've been living just for this one evening."

He stared at the pallid face. "I, too," he murmured.

A click, and the lift had stopped. This time. Peter jerked back the steel grille. The woman stepped out. Peter followed. He stared at the extraordinary figure of a man advancing toward them. It had the appearance of a man decapitated. Then Peter realised that it was a man with a white hood over his head, the whiteness blending with the white colour of the wall behind him. Two slits in the covering hood permitted the figure to scrutinise the two arrivals.

"The moon welcomes its children," said the hooded figure, solemnly.

"Blessed be the moon," replied the husky voice of the woman.

"Blessed be the moon," repeated Peter, mechanically.

The next moment he found a hood thrust into his hands. The woman in the green frock had already covered her head. Again Peter followed her example. Through the eye slits he saw the figure who had greeted them drawing aside a heavy curtain. The woman in the green frock passed through. Clenching his hands and holding himself in readiness, Peter followed. The curtain dropped behind them. A strong vibrant voice was chanting.

"All powerful are those who worship the moon."

And there came the solemn response of several voices:

"Blessed be the moon..."

It was eleven thirty. At that same moment a tired individual from the Cipher Department entered the room occupied by Detective Inspector Graves. He sank into the chair with a weary smile.

"Well ?" asked Graves.

"It was so easy and simple," replied the man from the Cipher Department, "that it baffled me for several hours. Then I remembered the rule of our Department."

"What is that ?" asked Graves.

"When in doubt, go to Whitaker's Almanack," was the reply. "And there I found that the symbols used were the usual ones to denote the moon's changes. It's a sort of astronomers' shorthand that has been used."

"Well, what does it mean?" impatiently demanded Graves.

The man smoothed the torn piece of paper from the diary before him. Graves leaned over his shoulder. By now, the puzzling symbols had become starred on his mind.

"The first symbol still baffles me," said the man from the Cipher Department. "It is obviously the sign of some society, maybe a black magic society."

"There are dozens of 'em in the West End," growled the Inspector.

"Well, go on."

"Then comes a sign that in astronomical language means Half Moon Street."

"Half Moon Street!" The Inspector was startled. "Yes, I believe you'reright."

"The rest of the message refers to some rendezvous. The eighteenth, that is this evening, at eleven-thirty."

"How damnably simple," said Graves. "Half Moon Street at eleven thirty." He gave a glance at the clock. "It's just that, now."

The man from the Cipher Department saw Graves reaching out for the inevitable bowler-hat.

"What now?" he asked.

"I'm going to Half Moon Street," declared Graves. "I may be on a fool's errand. On the other hand..."

He shrugged his shoulders.

"If this rendezvous is indoors," pointed out the other, "you're going to have some difficulty. There are a good many houses in that street."

"If I'm there until dawn, I'll find the right one," declared Graves, confidently.

A few minutes later he was strolling briskly towards Piccadilly.

PETER ALLISTER'S first impression was that he had stepped into a room crowded with lunatics. Yet there was a sinister decorum, an atmosphere almost of a prayer meeting about these moon disciples.

They were ranged in chairs which flanked the four walls of the room, leaving a shining uncarpeted centre of the floor. Although the white hoods with slits for the eyes covered all heads, the medley of people were still recognisable to Peter by the remainder of their undisguised figures.

He could pick out the crooked figure of the man in evening-dress who had consigned him to the devil in the street below. But the woman with the silver shimmering dress was not at his side. Other feminine figures that Peter had seen entering the house were there, strangely incongruous in their white hoods, and seated in the chair next to him was the woman in the green frock with whom he had ascended in the lift. Scattered at different points among the 40 hooded people in the room, Peter picked out the three burly men in dark suits who had arrived together. All held themselves in the chairs, tense and expectant.

But the dresses of the women presented a garish contrast against the black-blue painted walls. And, as a decorative fresco, the moon in all its various shapes and stages, was painted in bright silver..The ceiling was painted a heavy black. It seemed that oppressive night was lowering down upon this group of muttering humans. A silvery light effect in the room was provided by cunningly concealed lights. To the disreputable Peter Allister, seated gingerly on the edge of his chair, the whole atmosphere seemed a mixture of expensive night club and simple prayer-meeting assembly.

A little rostrum was backed by velvet curtains. Facing it was a long, low table of a black surface like ebony. From its shining surface it reflected the silver light, eerily. All the hooded heads were turned expectantly towards the velvet curtains. There was a queer, dead silence.

Then, in a solemn chant, a vibrant voice came from behind the curtains.

"We are gathered together, lost children of the moon, to do homage and give forth praise to the silver, shining light of night."

"We bow ourselves humbly," muttered the gathering in unison.

Once more the voice intoned behind the velvet curtains.

"We swear to do thy commands, Mother Moon, under thy shining light we will fulfil all thy desires, each one of thy commandments."

"Look down upon thy lost children, marooned on the earth," responded the congregation. "On our knees we worship thee."

A shuffle, and all in the room bowed their hooded heads. Peter was among them. But through the slits of his covering he eyed the black curtains expectantly.

They parted. A tall, commanding figure appeared. Like all others, he was hooded. But this was only part of a blue voluminous robe decorated with moons that covered him from shoulder to toes. There was something dramatically effective in his appearance. And the vibrant voice that came from beneath his hood had a commanding, terrifying resonance.

"Rise, lost children of the moon!" he said. "let us sing our praises to the mother of us all."

Once again the shuffle of feet. Everyone stood. Then a woman began to sing in a shrill, tremulous voice.

Others took it up. Soon, the blue-black walls were thrumming to the strange liturgy.

It was a gabble of medieval Latin. It was a chant of mysteries and hellish powers. It invoked devils and black shades. It was a caterwauling of dreadful tortures.

To Peter Allister, understanding little, but his musical ears appreciative of the macabre tonality of the chanting, there was in his mind the bewilderment of one who had stumbled across something hitherto outside his ken. He had heard of black magic being practised in Mayfair, and he had read sensational accounts by men and women who hinted at societies who held queer ceremonials within a stone's throw of Piccadilly Circus. But, in his own mind, he had dismissed such reports as fantastic.

Yet here was the reality, more fantastic than he could have imagined. A Moon Society. It was a strange series of events that had led him to this apparently hermetically sealed meeting-place, poised above Mayfair. Moon children! He almost laughed aloud. It was while a queer niece of moon music had been playing from a gramophone in the laboratory of a professor of astronomy in Oxford, that had idly picked up a torn piece of paper from a diary. When he had returned to his hotel he had puzzled for some time over the symbols. But a musician was used to symbols, and in a flash the message came to him. In the same idle fashion and with a sense of humour at his own idiocy he had decided to test the reality of that message.

And now he stood with a chanting throng of queer Mayfair idlers in a flat that had been converted into a temple for moon worship. A mater of a hundred feet below, a policeman paced the pavement, taxis slurred towards Piccadilly, and the jostling, indifferent life of London trailed towards the lighted ways of the West End.

But the chanting of the moon-worshippers had come to an end. Silence once again descended upon the room. The congregation seated themselves. All the hooded heads were turned to the high priest in his voluminous blue robe decorated with moons.

He opened a huge tome on the rostrum before him. Prom behind the slits of his hood, eyes seemed to blaze questioningly at the moon children. He began to read in that same vibrant voice which to Peter Allister, seemed vaguely familiar.

"To-night, my brethren," began the high priest, "I propose to read from the Testament of the Baron Gilles de Rais, one of the greatest of the moon men, and a martyr to our beliefs. It is the chapter devoted to the moon as a deity, and the mother of all fertility."

The moon worshippers listened tensely to every word. It was a chapter of dreadful revelation and one that emphasised the pathological manias of the depraved gathering. Peter Allister recalled the young women, the old men, the pallid faces, the cruel mouths of all those he had seen entering this house. And his gorge rose as the Walpurgis description was intoned by that powerful figure of the high priest.

At last it ended. A mumbled liturgy followed.

"Blessed be they who worship the moon.''

"The moon is all powerful."

"Swift and sure is the vengeance of the moon," intoned the priest savagely.

Peter Allister started.

"The silver assassin will come on wings through the night sky," responded the worshippers.

"Death to all enemies of the moon!" shouted the priest.

"And to all their kind!"

On this note, the concealed lights in the room began slowly to dim. Within the space of a minute blackness was upon them. Yet, as Peter Allister stared into that blanket of darkness he saw queer, glowing shapes materialising. Hooded shapes. They glistened like shining silver. Hoods with lifted eyes. In his first cold shiver he imagined that he was witnessing some strange materialisation. Then the explanation came to him. All those hoods, his own included, were daubed in phosphorous. It was the phosphorous, shining in the darkness that gave this eerie effect.

A steady rumble sounded above his head. He jerked back his head. And so did all the others in the spacious room.

"Down on your knees before the great revelation!" thundered the high priest.

Perched above them was the blazing bladder of the moon. The false ceiling had slid back, in the fashion of an astronomical observatory, and the night sky with its suspended, lopsided moon leered down upon them.

There was an hysterical scramble to the floor. Women cried. Men shouted. And out of that hysteria began once again the medieval Latin chant which had opened the strange ceremony. The chant this time was one of triumph. The moon worshippers were facing their god. The singing seemed to slobber to a close. It was followed by tense silence. Still on their knees, awed, the moon children waited.

The high priest, whose phosphorescent robe seemed to blaze like a flame in the darkness towered over them. His passionate voice came towards them like waves of radiation.

"The moon whispers a warning to us to-night, my children. A warning of peril."

A woman sighed in the darkness.

"It tells me," went on the voice, relentlessly. "that somewhere in our midst to-night is a spy."

Peter jerked back his head. There was a cold chill at his spine.

"A spy!" insisted the priest, giving the hiss of the word a cruel twist.

"Hidden among us, an unbeliever. Somewhere in this darkness."

"Death to the spy!" shrieked one of the women.

"It shall be death," said that writhing flame in the darkness. "The unbeliever shall be sacrificed. But first the spy must be denounced. Be careful, moon children! The spy may be at your side."

Everyone in that assembly seemed to shrink. To Peter's eyes the shining hoods seemed to close towards him. He clenched his fists and quietly drew his chair towards him. He was ready to fight his way out of this hellish gathering.

"But be not afraid," went on the priest. "The spy will be revealed. Be ready, my children. The moon goddess approaches."

A bright light split the darkness. It was a spotlight, shining upon the black curtains that were slowly parted.  Everyone seemed to hold their breath.

Something glittering, moving, materialising there.

Soon the figure was revealed. It was the strange woman Peter had seen descending from a car in a shimmering frock. In the spotlight her eyes took on a deep, fathomless quality. The head was held back, the slim body taut as though some possession was inflicting her.

At the same moment a queer cacophony of music began to steal through the room. Peter recognised it, with a shiver. It was the moon music, that same medley of strange somas that he had heard to the room Edward Carr at Oxford. The music of the moon's light captured by photoelectric cells.

As those unearthly bells without resonance began to sound, the woman in the glittering silver dress moved her body to the rhythm of a dance, a bare foot peeped out beneath the dress. She came forward, glided the spotlight trailing her, remorselessly. Her arm stretched slowly forth.

Peter recalled the simile that had been born in his mind heard that tolling music of the moon. Funeral bells. Muffled. Was he witnessing a dance of death― his own death? The tall dancer was now slowly gyrating in the centre of the room. The dark orbs of her eyes still seemed fixed on vacancy.

Now came the booming note. The woman seemed to jerk, epileptically at the sound. A strange, ghost-like hand which held the moon worshippers entranced. Peter recalled that one of his musical friends had described ballet as on assault on space. He was now witnessing a dance which seemed epitomize the assault on space and time, the bugbears of modern astronomers...

The dancer was a genius at bodily interpretation of that unearthly music. Despite the peril of the moment. Peter could not withhold his admiration. She seemed to transfix herself as that knock, the dramatic note, came into the moon music.

"Knock, knock, knock, booooo! Knock, knock, booooo!"

Followed that frenzy of crashing, muffled notes. It swirled the dancer into a tarantella. She twisted and gyrated, jerking madly to the deathlike note that boomed out. And at the same time Peter realised that this mad, possessed dancer was approaching relentlessly towards him. It was as though he was being "smelled out" by a frenzied witch-doctor in the depths of an African jungle. He struggled with his brain to realise that Mayfair, shops, buses, normal people were only a few yards away. And still the dancer, trailed by the spotlight, came nearer to him.

With startling suddenness, the music ceased. At the same moment, however, the dancer seemed transformed. Her hand leaped out and plucked the phosphorescent hood from Peter's head. Simultaneously, the spotlight blinded him fully.

"The spy!" shrieked the dancer.

"The spy!" yelled the crowd.

Groping with his hands like a blind man, Peter Allister found the chair. He swung it above his head, facing those phosphorescent hoods that were slowly circling him and were about to draw tight like a noose.

"STAND BACK!" he shouted. "I'll brain the first one who comes near me!"

"Stand back!" repeated the vibrant voice of the priest. "Leave him alone!"

The dancer fell back. So did the shining hoods. They seemed to sink into the shadows. In that instant, Peter felt desperately alone. The spotlight was still shining in his eyes, remorselessly. it left him with a confused idea of his position in the moon temple.

"So, It is Peter Allister who dares play the spy on the moon children." came the surprising voice of the priest. "The death of your stepbrother was not sufficient warning to you. He died, because he dared meddle with moon matters that did not concern him."

"He was murdered!" said Peter, squaring his shoulders, and holding the chair above his head.

"Murdered by the moon," came the calm rejoinder from the priest. "As, I am afraid, you are about to be murdered."

Peter gave a flourish to the chair above his head.

"You'll find me a tougher proposition than my stepbrother," he shouted. , "Make way, you lunatics !"

And he rushed forward with the chair.

The spotlight followed him. At the same moment, another cut the darkness. And a third. The shafts of light faced him, blinded him, at every move! He staggered about the room, the chair, raised menacingly, but his eyes found nothing but light. They dazzled him remorselessly. He crashed into a wall, and struck at it savagely with the chair. The chair broke. With the ruins still in his hands, he faced about. Still the lights shone on him. He was like a blind man, groping, And all about him were the chuckles, and ripples of laughter of those who watched his vain efforts to escape.

Peter almost sobbed his despair. To be helplessly trapped by three lights.

"Cowards, the whole damn crowd of you!" he sobbed.

They came on him like an avalanche from behind. With what strength he had left he fought and kicked against the overwhelming rush. He heard the crack of a bone, and a yelp of pain. It encouraged him. But the end was near. He went down to the floor, a struggling mass on top of him. A heavy boot came down on his face. He groaned, and slipped into unconsciousness. The last dancing sounds through his brain were of muffled bells.

"Knock, knock, booooo! "

WHEN HIS eyes opened again it seemed that he was in space. His body was lost in the night sky. The cool air made salty the sweat that dribbled from his forehead. And that silvery bladder of the moon leered down upon him.

He tried to raise an arm to shield his face from its hateful rays. But his arm was powerless. His legs, too. His whole body was clamped to some black, shining surface. Realisation came to him. He was stretched on
the moon altar.

And as the sweat broke out afresh on his face, the orb of the moon was transformed. A man, a moon man was gazing down on him. A cruel mouth, eyes mad with hatred, and a powerful hand holding a gleaming sacrificial knife.

As the knife was raised for the downward thrust, that vibrant voice, which now he knew, intoned in a whisper:

"So must perish all enemies of the moon."

Peter tried to cry out. He struggled vainly against his bonds. He could hear, like the pounding of his own heart, the intake of breath that would precede the stroke of the knife.

"Knock, knock, booooo!"

The figure holding the knife turned. This time the sound was real. The knocks were devastating blows against the door. And a police whistle was shilling and rousing echoes in the street below.

"The police! Police!"

Pandemonium raged. Phosphorescent shapes fluttered in the darkness and disappeared one by one. A powerful foot was placed against the altar. The hand that held the knife was reaching towards the moon. And even as there came the crash of splintering wood the blue robe of the priest seemed to go floating into the night sky like a witch riding away from the dawn.

Heavy footsteps sounded. They were lost in the deep rumble overhead. Staring upwards, Peter saw the moon annihilated by a black shadow. The night sky disappeared. At the same time, slowly, the concealed lights on the walls began to come alive. There was the shuffle of feet.

"Everyone stay where they are, please!"

The command came in the familiar voice of Detective-Inspector Graves. And the next moment the irritate fox-terrier like face was bending over the bound figure.

"Hullo, inspector!" ventured Peter "You just arrived in time."

"So it seems," nodded Graves. "I've been chasing you between Oxford and London."

"I hope this time you're determined to arrest me," said Peter. "A prison cell would be safe and restful after this !"

policeman unbuckled the straps that bound him. As he struggled to his feet, he saw a frightened, whispering crowd of men and women herded in a corner of the room. The lost children of the moon! Pallid faces, tawdry-dressed, ill-fitting suits― they looked a miserable bundle of humanity. A pile of ordinary looking hoods was heaped against a wall where they had been hastily flung. And in matter of fact way, two plain-clothes detectives were noting names and addresses in official-looking books.

Graves supervised the proceedings with a grim air. He came over to where Peter Allister was nursing his bruises.

"A good night's work, inspector." commented Peter. "I don't know how you discovered this place, but it badly needed raiding."

The inspector sniffed, disappointedly.

"I wonder. That bunch over there contains at least a dozen people well known to us. They're always found in every raid in the West End. whether it's a gambling house or any other sort of house. I expected something more unusual on this occasion."

"But didn't you discover―"

Peter stopped, and gave a searching glance at the motley crowd herded in a corner of the room. He was looking for the figure of the high priest, the man in the blue robe, with its decoration of moons. The man was not there.

He lifted his head. A black painted ceiling was stretched across. Then someone shook him. It was Graves.

"Has someone got away?" asked the inspector.

Peter nodded.

"The moon murderer," he said, quietly.

The Scotland Yard man cursed.

7: Cosmic Power

IT WAS FIVE DAYS later before Detective-Inspector Graves again sought out Peter Allister for a long-delayed conversation. As usual, he had some difficulty in tracking down the elusive, sardonic young man. Then, at eight o'clock one evening, the inspector stood ringing and knocking in turn outside the door of a flat overlooking Hyde Park.

After five minutes' noisy persistence the door was flung open. An unshaven, wild-eyed Peter Allister swathed in a gaudy dressing-gown stood there.

"Go away!" was all he said, and sought to close the door.

But Graves was too quick for him. He deftly inserted a heavy boot, pushed back the door, and entered.

"I want to have a talk with you, Allister," he said grimly.

Peter glowered at him.

"Don't you Scotland Yard fellers do anything but talk? Why don't you go away and arrest a murderer or something."

Graves nodded.

"I will― when you tell me who the murderer is. I suspect you know more than you've told me, Allister."

Peter growled and turned away.

"It's easy enough to suspect. The difficulty is to prove anything," he said.

"I'm glad you appreciate some of our difficulties at Scotland Yard," smiled Graves. "Have you a chair in this flat?"

"No." replied Peter. "Except the one at the piano there, and I'm using that. Can't you people realise that I've a recital at the Aeolian Hall next week, and that I've come here to practise in quiet. I've a damned good mind to call a policeman and have you arrested for forcing your way in here," he added.

Graves glanced at the bare walls, the bare floor, and the doors, which, half-opened, revealed a series of bare rooms. Except for a huge grand piano, a chair, a table with a coffee pot and a dirty cup and saucer on it. a divan with a rough blanket tumbled over, and a telephone standing forlornly on the floor, the flat with its several rooms was bare.

"You might have chosen a more comfortable place to live in," suggested the Scotland Yard man. "Why did you leave Oxford ?"

"Couldn't work there," said Peter. "I found this place, paid a year's rent, bought a piano, and settled down to practise."

"So you intend to settle here?"

"Yes. As soon as Jill Bretherton agrees to marry me, I'll begin buying any other furniture that is necessary."

"I see. You're still determined about that girl?"

"Very much so. And now, inspector, having reported my movements, will you go away and leave me to my work?"

He reached out for a cigarette and lit one. The inspector noticed that the thin, musical hand was trembling. The sandy hair was all dishevelled. The lean, hungry face was more lean and hungry than ever.

"When did you last have a meal ?" asked Graves, bluntly.

"How should I know?" was the irritated response. "Twelve noon today, or yesterday. I can't remember. I'm not one of your mathematicians."

"Well, you're coming out for a meal now," said Graves, in determined fashion.

"Why ?"

"Firstly, because you need one. Secondly, because I'm hungry. Thirdly, because I want to talk to you."

Peter groaned. He took up a sheet of music manuscript from the table, and, with those thin but powerful hands, tore it into shreds.

"You've spoiled a masterpiece, anyhow, blundering in on me like this, inspector. Don't you realise that my job is to write music?"

"And mine to find a murderer," said Graves, callously. "Come along, Allister."

For a moment, it looked as though the young man was going to throw himself at the Scotland Yard official. Then the humour of the situation appealed to him. He grinned, and rubbed his stubbly chin.

"D'you want me to shave ?"

"Please yourself."

"Well, I won't." He tore off the dressing gown, pulled a grey sweater over his sinewy body, and gazed down at the scraps of music manuscript littering the floor.

"A bad piece of work, anyhow," he grunted. "All right, inspector, lead on I'm ready for a meal, seeing that you're going to pay for it."

"I'm beginning to appreciate that you really have come into a fortune," said Graves, bitterly, and opened the door.

Ten minutes later, they were entering a quiet, but luxurious little restaurant. The sprucely garbed head waiter regarded the unshaven man in the grey sweater with some trepidation. The trepidation increased when Peter contemptuously tossed aside the elaborate bill-of-fare and demanded in a loud voice :

"Sausages and mash. Lots of 'em!"

"I beg your pardon, sir," began the head waiter, with a sidelong glance at Graves, "but I'm afraid we haven't―"

"Well, get some," commanded Peter. "If I can get sausages and mash at the Ritz I ought to be able to get them in this dive."

"Of course, sir. Of course!" The head waiter became apologetic. "If you don't mind waiting about 15 minutes?"

"I do, but I suppose I must," nodded Peter. "But just to while away the time, bring a bottle of your best champagne."

"Yes, sir." The head waiter was impressed. "Veuve Clicquot or Mumm?"

"Veuve Clicquot. I prefer the widow to the baron." As the waiter scurried away, Peter chuckled at the expression on the Scotland Yard man's face "I hope they provide you with a good entertainment allowance, inspector?"

"It doesn't usually run to champagne," said Graves thoughtfully.

"Let it be a lesson, then, not to drag a genius away from his work."

And he watched the sparkling yellow wine froth into his glass.

"Would like to suggest a toast?" asked Graves. "The name of a murderer, for example?"

Peter laughed, and shook his head.

"It's too good a champagne to spoilt by emotional thoughts. No, drink it man, and enjoy it."

Peter drained his own glass at a gulp. Watched cautiously by the inspector, he seemed to be in a highly neurotic state. Apart from the macabre experience of several nights ago, he had been spending days and nights alone in that bare flat with only a grand piano for company. He had played, composed, improvised,  and played again. Even now elusive melodies seemed to be struggling for expression within the whole of his taut body.

"It may interest you to know," said Graves calmly, "that we had your disreputable companions of the other evening, the moon children, up before a magistrate."

"What happened to them?" Peter chuckled, helping himself to another glass of champagne.

"Nothing much. A few fines here and there. There was no real charge against them, particularly as you refused to give evidence yourself."

Peter was thoughtful.

"Why should I give evidence?" he asked. "They were just a crowd of civilised wrecks trying to get a new kick out of life."

"By means of a community murder."

Peter laughed and drank deeply.

"I told you, inspector, that the murderer, the real brain behind these moon killings, escaped by the roof as you were smashing in the door."

"Yes, we discovered that he had escaped right enough," he admitted

"And that's what I want see you about. You know who that man is."

A subtle smile crossed Peter's face. "I suspect," he said, quietly. "But I'm not certain."

"Give me the benefit of your suspicions, then?"

"I will, as soon as they are more definite."

Graves shrugged his shoulders.

"What led you to that house in Half Moon-street the other night?" he asked.

"I might as well ask you the same, inspector. You arrived at a most opportune moment."

"This is what brought me," said the inspector, producing the slip of paper with its astronomical symbols. "I picked it up in your bedroom at the Sceptre Hotel. Where did you find it?"

Peter grinned.

"Picked it up in Oxford," he replied. "It aroused my curiosity. Thought I would like to see what is was all about."

"It aroused my curiosity," said the inspector, leaning across the table. "It still arouses my curiosity. There are four people in Oxford who are concerned in these moon murders― Yourself, John Bretherton, his sister, and Professor Edward Carr. One of you four is a murderer."

Peter cocked an eyebrow.

"You're becoming very definite, inspector.

"I'm going to be even more definite. Within forty-eight hours the moon murderer will be arrested."

"Glad to hear it," said Peter. "Then maybe I'll be permitted to go on with my music. Music, my dear inspector, is much more important than murder."

"Maybe to you. I've known cases where they go together."

"Music and murder," pondered Peter, aloud. "A fascinating combination of the arts. But precious things are often together― like these sausages and mashed potatoes, for example. Don't they look good?"

The waiter produced them with a hurt, professional air..

"And bring another bottle of this same vintage," nodded Peter, in the direction of the empty bottle.

"Yes, sir. Certainly, sir."

"By the way," resumed Peter, tackling his food with zest, "was there a professional dancer among that crowd you arrested in the raid the other evening?"

Graves nodded.

"You mean the girl in the shining stage frock? Calls herself Lola Mendoza."

"Sounds Spanish."

"She's pure Whitechapel. Just a stage name she's picked up."

"Did you get anything out of her?" persisted Peter.

"Very little. She used to be in musical comedy-chorus girl. Been out of a job over a year. Then some theatrical agent got her the job of dancing before this crowd for a guinea a performance."

"Not much," commented Peter.

"No, particularly as the theatrical agent took thirty-three and a third per cent. of her salary."

"Who taught her that weird moon dance ?"

"I thought you would ask that," smiled Graves. "It was one of the first things I asked her myself. But I drew a blank. She admitted going to that house in Half Moon-street for a rehearsal. But there, it seems, she was received by a hooded figure who produced a gramophone, some weird records, and worked out the dance rhythm for her."

"And she never saw his face?"

"Never."

"How did she find me out the other evening in that crowd?"

It was the turn of Graves to chuckle.

"Easy," he explained. "The master of the ceremonies had previously pointed you out to her."

"I see." Peter had laid down his knife and fork. "But surely it was easy enough for you to discover who owned or rented that place in Half Moon Street?"

"Routine work," said Graves. "Who d'you think does own that place?"

"Haven't the faintest idea."

"You do."

"Eh?" Peter was startled. "I own that place in Half Moon Street?"

The Scotland Yard man nodded.

"It was purchased many years ago as a property investment by your father. He left it, in his estate, to your half-brother, Phillip Allister. He, in turn, has left it to you."

Peter sighed.

"This is becoming ironical, inspector. But who rented the place? Surely you got on the track of somebody there."

"I have the papers and the lease on my desk now," said the detective. "It appears that a Mr. Moon rented the flat. Mr. Moon paid his rent in cash, sent by a special messenger. Nobody appears to have met Mr. Moon."

"Mr. Moon." Peter exploded in mirth. "I'm going to order a liqueur brandy after that. What d'you say, inspector?"

"If it amuses you," sighed Graves. He waited until the large goblets were placed before him. "When we find Mr. Moon we've got the murderer," he said.

"Obviously," agreed Peter. "And the girl?"

"Which girl?"

"Lola Mendoza."

"Oh, I'm taking no notice of her."

"But I am inspector. I suppose you have her address?"

"Somewhere in Whitechapel. I have it among my records. But why are you so interested in this girl? Are you suggesting that she is implicated in these murders?"

A dreamy, reflective look had come into Peter's eyes.

"I've forgotten all about your moon murders," he replied. "I can only remember that Lola Mendoza gave the finest dance interpretation of the moon music that I've ever seen. Now if I could persuade her to appear at my recital and dance to my moon composition we both might be famous in a night."

Graves exploded.

"Pah! You're impossible! I thought I could depend on you to help me. All the people I talk to in this case are moon cracked or music cracked. After all, Allister, remember I saved your life the other night."

"So you did," agreed Peter, as though recognition had dawned. "So you did. And just to show my gratitude I'm going to break the rule of a lifetime."

"And what is that?" demanded Graves, querulously.

"Pay for a dinner." And Peter crooked a finger at the head waiter. "The bill, please."

"Yes, sir. Certainly, sir."

The head waiter was now his admiring slave.

"Very good," said Graves. "I'll be callous enough to let you pay. And you won't give me the name of your suspect?"

Peter shook his head.

"Only when I'm certain. Anyhow, you've assured me that you will have the moon murderer arrested within forty-eight hours."

"I'm staking my reputation on it,' said Graves.

"When you've done that," said Peter, "then I'll pool my information with you."

"That's something," admitted Graves, grudgingly. "But let me remind you that to-morrow night may have serious consequences."

"Why?"

"The moon is at the full." Peter laughed and rose.

"I'm not interested," he said. "Only music matters at the moment."

He paid the bill and tipped the waiter generously.

"I hope the... er... sausages and mashed potatoes were to your liking, sir," ventured the head waiter."

"Not bad," said Peter. "But too dear. Too damned dear. Only the champagne was worth its price. Goodnight to you, inspector."

"Good-night," growled Graves.

And he stood with the head waiter watching that sandy-haired unshaven lean creature disappearing through the doorway.

IT WAS AFTER MIDNIGHT. For some hours. Peter Allister had been bent over the piano in that deserted flat, his thin fingers conjuring forth strange cacophonies, trills of melodies, sombre base notes and thunderous crescendos. A solitary electric light devoid of shade, dangled from the ceiling. Sheafs of music manuscript were scattered about the floor. A sheet, with many pencil marks, rested above the keyboard.

With a sigh of weariness, Peter slumped back. His gaze went towards the uncurtained windows. Over the roofs of London, from out of the dark depths of Hyde Park, a huge moon was rising as though in solemn ritual.

The man at the piano gazed at it in fascinated fashion. Through the greasy panes of glass, the moon took on a blood red appearance. He had a vivid recollection of it as seen from his stretched-out posture on the moon altar. He shivered. Then it was a misshapen bladder. To-night, it was possessed of a full red roundness. What was it Inspector Graves had said to him at parting?

"To-morrow night may have serious consequences.... The moon is at full!"

Once again he shivered. He cursed himself for not providing curtains to shut out that sinister orb. He cursed the series of events that had made the moon a thing to be shunned. The moon was made for music and love. Its beauty had roused lovers walking beneath its silvery gleam to plight their troth and seek beauty in themselves. It had inspired musicians to rippling sounds of beauty. The man Chopin had conjured the Nocturnes out of its pale rays. And there was Beethoven, too, the real master of all music.

Abruptly, Peter rose and clicked off the light. The moon's radiance seemed to sweep into the bare room. Its light rippled across the keyboard of the piano. It silhouetted the window and flung giant shadows across the floor. With his back to the wall, Peter stood and gazed at it. Yes, the men of genius were right. The moon was beautiful.

"Beautiful!..." he sobbed, and moved quickly to the piano.

His fingers stroked the keys. In that unearthly light they seemed to discover the right notes. He played without thinking, lost in the mood of the moment. Subconsciously he realised that he was playing The Moonlight Sonata.

Effortlessly and with a beautiful rhythm, his fingers moved, agitated and doubled in that silver radiance. A pool of pale light was creeping across the floor towards him. His back was bowed, his head swayed, his whole body pulsated to the marvellous music.

For ten minutes he continued thus. His mind was lost in a realm where fauns and nymphs sported, danced and loved in moonlight abandon. Metal-like trees shivered with the ecstasy of young virgins caught by love. Streams became like molten metal, pouring in, passion and flooding a moonlit lake that lapped against a ruined temple. And somewhere through this landscape drenched in silver came the call of one who loved him.

One who loved him...

His fingers faltered.  The music slipped into dissonance. A shrill scream was sounding into the darkness. It was repeated. And again. He stumbled away from the piano. His hand clutched the switch on the wall. A click and the moonlight fled, leaving a  bare floor and walls to the yellow light of civilisation.

And on the floor in the corner the telephone continued to shrill its summons.

Cring! ...  Cring!... Cring!"

With a curse Peter bent down and picked it up. He was about to dash it to the floor when out of the receiver squeaked a distant voice.

"Peter... Peter!"

Jill's voice.

"Hello !"

An infernal buzzing and cackling. He hated telephones. They gave forth bad music. Sound and fury, signifying nothing.

"Is that you, Peter?"

"Yes. What is it?" he gasped.

There was obvious agitation in her voice.

"Thank God I've found you," she said. "I've telephoned a dozen places to get you. Eventually, it was Scotland Yard who gave me your number."

"You can always depend upon Scotland Yard keeping an eye on my movements," replied Peter, sardonically. "Where are you speaking from?"

"From the flat in Oxford. I want..."

More buzzings and distortions.

"Hold on a moment," shouted Peter. He dragged the telephone to the piano. "I'll play some music into the damned thing. It might tune it up."

"Peter! Do be serious. I want you to come here, at once."

"To Oxford?"

"Yes, I'm alone. John has been away for some days in Wales."

"What's he doing in Wales?"

"He's been working like a madman on his moon studies. I only discovered the other day that he has been observing the moon from the slopes of Snowdon. He says he can get clearer observations there. And he's put up at an inn in the neighbourhood of the mountain."

Peter's face went grim. Once again he recalled that warning of Detective Inspector Graves. "To-morrow night the moon will be at the full."

"Well ?"

"Peter, I'm frightened. I feel something terrible is going to happen. Oh, if you love me, my dear, come at once."

His heart leaped.

"Say that again !" he shouted, into the black, cold mechanism.

Distant and weak came the voice. "Peter, I love you."

"And I worship you, my dear," he shouted back, in triumph. "I'm on my way, Jill."

"Bless you!"

He slammed back the receiver. Somewhere among the mass of manuscripts littering the table was a watch. He swept the papers aside in ruthless search. There it was: It showed one o'clock. Impossible to get a train. That did not deter him. Jill had said she loved him: And she wanted him, now.

He struggled into the grey jersey. Still unshaven, hair over his forehead, he ran for the door, opened it and almost hurled himself downstairs. The piano, music, "The Moonlight Sonata" and even the electric light were forgotten. Jill loved him.

He reached the pavement. A Cockney taxi driver, yawning over a hot cup of coffee at a stall, found himself suddenly confronted by a madman.

"Leave that!" snapped the man with tousled hair. "I want you to drive me. I'm in a hurry."

The taxi-driver drew his leather sleeve across his mouth, regarded the figure in the grey jersey, and said:

"And where might you be wanting to go, young feller ?"

"Oxford," replied Peter, briefly. "Come on, there's no time to waste."

The taxi-driver winked ostentatiously at the coffee stall keeper.

"Nah let's get this strite," he began. "It is Oxford Circus or Oxford Street that yer want?"

"I said Oxford... the town. Ever heard of it ?" asked Peter sarcastically, impatient.

"Yus, I've 'eard of it," nodded the taxi-driver. "I 'aven't had the benefit of me eddication there, but―"

"Then get moving!" said Peter.

"Gram!" The taxi-driver gave a disparaging look at that grey jersey and the tousled hair. "I'm not movin' from this 'ere stall until I sees five pounds."

And he turned in a leisurely, epicurean manner to his steaming cup.

Peter slammed five pound notes on the counter.

"Gawblimey!" ejaculated the taxidriver to the coffee-stall keeper. " 'E means it."

"Come on!" insisted Peter, and dragged the driver to his cab which was marooned in the gutter a few yards away.

With irritating slowness, the taxidriver began to wrap himself in a series of overcoats.

"Goin' ter be a bit chilly," he said to the extraordinary passenger. "Better tike a rug, young feller."

And he pitched something that resembled a piece of sacking into the cab where Peter was already seated.

"D'you know the way " asked Peter.

"I'll find it," grinned the taxi-driver. "Keep 'eading north-west, eh?" He started up the engine. Then somethink struck him. He leaned out of the driver's seat and shouted to the coffee-stall keeper.

"Keep that cup of cawfee 'ot for me, mitey." He leaned back in his seat and chuckled. "Oxford!... Gawblimey!"

He let in the clutch and the taxi lurched away.

IT WAS FOUR O'CLOCK in the morning when the taxi entered the High at Oxford. The cab and its driver had shown a remarkable turn of speed once the tank had been filled up with petrol and London left behind. Peter directed the driver to the side street, jumped out, and ran up the stairs to the flat shared by Jill and her brother.

She was waiting for him. Neither spoke. Yet everything was said. Her dark eyes looked into his. and seemed to see nothing but him. He put his arms around her. She yielded, instinctively, to him. Their lips met. Her eyes closed: Peter had all the savage joy of possession, and yet he could only whisper.

"My dear... my dear."

His voice recalled her to herself. Gently, the white hands that had clutched him a moment ago, now gently urged them apart.

"It was sweet of you to come to me, Peter, when I needed you so badly."

"My darling, you're never going to get rid of me again," he replied.

"I never want to."

They both smiled, rather self-consciously. He saw that her face was paler than usual, and had a tired, worried expression. The dark dressing-gown she wore emphasised the pallor.

"What's the matter, Jill ?" he asked, gently.

She shook her head.

"Maybe a woman's silly fancies, Peter. But I'm worried about John. He's been half crazy ever since he began these moon studies. He knew I hated this astronomical bug that seemed to have possessed him. Just as I hated the ever watchful, sceptical, sneering Professor Edward Carr. They were always together. Whispering. Drifting away from me. John even refused to discuss his work with me," she sobbed.

"My dear," he said, soothingly, taking her in his arms, "you're taking this badly. You mustn't let yourself get into this state."

She dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief.

"It's silly of me, I know," she said, trying to recover herself. "When John announced that he was going into Wales, to Snowdon, to complete his observations, I was really glad. I felt that once away from Oxford and the compelling personality of Professor Carr, he would soon be his old self again."

"And so he will," encouraged Peter.

"But last night," she went on, "I found myself staring— just staring at the moon. It seemed to come up over the horizon all blood red. And I began to think of all those horrible murders, of dead men with silver faces, of moon maniacs and other dreadful things. I also wondered why I had not heard from you, Peter. Then I remembered that the next night would be full moon, and that all these crimes had been committed at full moon. Perhaps you were in danger as well as my brother. I couldn't stand it any longer. I just ran to the telephone."

Her eyes were again dimmed with tears. He smiled down at her and kissed her.

"And now here am I, perfectly safe as you see," he chuckled. "And so, I am sure, is John. You said he had gone down alone to Snowdon ?"

She nodded. "Yes."

"And Professor Carr?"

"He's still in Oxford. He is giving a lecture at the Minerva Hall this afternoon. Several distinguished scientists are going to attend."

"Then my visit to Oxford is not In vain," he chuckled. "For I think I'll also listen to that lecture."

"You beast?" she smiled through her tears. "I thought you had come to Oxford to see me."

Before he could reply, a loud honking sounded in the street below. Jill started.

"Good heavens, what is that?"

"I rather think it is my taxi driver becoming impatient," grinned Peter.

"But where did you pick up a taxi?" she asked.

"Just outside Hyde Park," he said.

She laughed. It was a happy, inconsequential laugh.

"Peter, you're a fool! But ft most loveable fool," she added, shyly.

He nodded, and slipped his arm about her shoulders.

"You're going to have a job looking after me," he confided. "Once we're married!"

"Are we going to be married ?" she teased.

"We are. I might tell you, Jill, that I've already taken the flat for a year where we are going to live."

She put her arms akimbo.

"You have, have you," she said with mock sarcasm. "And I daresay you've chosen the furniture, the carpets, the curtains, and "

"Not quite," he retorted. "But I've bought a piano."

"A piano!"

"Yes, and... er... a bed which I'll throw out of the window when you come in."

She regarded him, and sighed.

"Yes, I've taken on a job in a thousand," she decided.

"But I'm a man in a thousand," he protested, modestly.

She was about to retort when that insistent honking began again in the street below.

"That poor driver!" she expostulated.

"Yes, I expect he wants his breakfast," grinned Peter, "I didn't give him time to have his supper."

"Well, go downstairs and bring him up !" she commanded. I'll start getting breakfast ready for all of us."

Already she had whipped forth an apron and was tying it about her waist.

"Darling, promise me one thing," begged Peter.

"What is that ?"

"Let me wash up after breakfast with you."

"You'll soon get tired of that," she laughed.

"I'll always adore it with you," he said, and once again took her in his arms and kissed her.

"Gawblimey! Wot's goin' on 'ere?"

The taxi-driver, swathed in his many overcoats and giving the appearance of a moujik who had just crossed the Russian steppes, was standing in the doorway.

"There's a lot going on here, my friend," said Peter, pleasantly. "Come inside and meet the girl who has just promised to be my wife."

"Lor' luvaduck!" chortled the taxidriver. "So that's why you wanted me to drive you to Oxford."

"Yes, and no," said Peter.

"Rare impatient, he was, miss," said the driver coming in the doorway sideways. "Wouldn't let me finish my cup o' cawfee. It's still waitin' for me at Hyde Park."

Jill smiled at him.

"Please sit down, and I'll get you a cup of coffee and some bacon and eggs."

"Coo! Bakin an' eggs. I'm in luck."

"By the way, what's your name?" asked Peter.

"Alf— Alf Merryweather. But all my pals call me Alf," he added hast

"Then meet Miss Jill Bretherton, Alf. And myself, Peter Allister."

"Pleased to meet yer, miss. Glad to know yer, sir. I've stopped me clock tickin'. Do yer want me to drive yer back to town, sir?"

"I'm staying the day here,, and you're hired for the day, Alf. Also your taxi."

"Lumme! I'm on velvet. Won't the missus be pleased."

"Missus," Peter stared. "Are you married then?"

"Natcherally! Got free kids."

"Won't they be worrying about you, Mister Merryweather," called Jill from the kitchen.

"Alf, please, miss," pleaded the taxi-driver. "I 'ates the sound of the name Merryweather."

"Very well, Alf. Won't your family be worrying?"

"Lor luvaduck! They'll be as pleased as cats wiv two tails when I don't turn up to-dye. The feelin's mutual, miss."

"I see."

Peter produced cigarettes. "A cigarette, Alf?"

"Thank yer, Sir. Don't mind if I do."

"Peter!"

Again Jill's voice. "Darling?"

"You're looking a positive disgrace. You haven't shaved for days. Go into the bathroom and get rid of that tilth, beard. Breakfast will be ready I when you are."

The taxi-driver chuckled and gazed compassionately at his passenger.

"Did yer say you were goin' ter be married, or that yer was married already, sir?" he asked in a stage whisper.

Peter laughed, and indicated the bathroom.

"Any use to you?" he asked.  Alf Merryweather shuddered.  "Ain't got no use for water," he said. "It don't mix with petrol."

"No, it don't," agreed Peter, and went into the bathroom.

An hour later, replete with coffee and bacon and eggs the three were stretched out in comfortable armchairs in front of the gas fire. Oxford was awakening to a new day. Milk carts clattering up and down the streets, the men yodelling, the wheels rumbling. The postman followed with his peremptory rat-a-tat. Newspaper boys were going their rounds.

"And what d'you think of Oxford, Alf?" asked Peter. "At least, what you've seen of it up to the present."

"Looks a poor, broken-down sort of a suburb to me, sir," replied the taxidriver. "Leastways, those buildings looked as though they wanted doin' up a bit. Ought to be a good openin' for a builder 'ere.

"There ought to be." chuckled Peter.

Once again Jill took them firmly in hand.

"Now both of you are going to have some sleep," she declared. "Alf,  there's a spare bedroom over the way. Peter, you can take John's room."

"And what about you, Jill?"

"I'll be all right."

"I'm not going to bed until I've helped you wash up," declared Peter.

"Let me 'ave a go at it, miss," offered Alf. "Sometimes I don't break anyfink."

She laughed and shook her head. "You go and get some sleep, Alf. Peter likes to wash-up."

"Gawblimey!" muttered the taxidriver in awe, and staggered away to the bedroom.

Peter chuckled after the departure. "If he removes those overcoats, he'll die of pneumonia," he declared.

"I wonder," she smiled.

Ten minutes later a resonant snoring brought them to the bedroom occupied by the taxi-driver. Gently they opened the door and peeped in.

Alf. Merryweather had discarded the bed. With his overcoats wrapped about him, he was stretched on the floor of the room, snoring lustily and happily.

AT FIVE O'CLOCK that afternoon, driven importantly by Alf Merryweather, Peter and Jill were deposited at the entrance to the Minerva Hall. It was already crowded. A goodly number of students, several dons, and an imposing array of savants, among whom was Dr. Heinmesch of Zurich, and Edwin Kyne, of the Mt. Wilson Observatory, had collected. Many other famous astronomers were there, famous only as names to Peter Allison. But occasional whispers from Jill as she pointed out brilliant savants, revealed that Professor Edward Carr could command one of the finest scientific and intellectually alert audiences in Europe.

As he took his seat at the side of Jill, Peter recognised one familiar face. It stood out in that gathering with a distinctiveness that caused him to start. For the fox-terrier-faced figure carefully nursing a bowler-hat on his knees was Detective-Inspector Graves of Scotland Yard. The inspector had already observed Peter. He nodded, slowly, a little smile of triumph on his face.

"What is it?" asked Jill, who had noticed the start.

"Just someone I've recognised," murmured Peter. "Nothing of importance, my dear."

During the day, Jill had recovered much of her self-possession. The presence of Peter, the man whom she realised meant everything in the world to her now, had stabilised her and caused her to throw off those morbid fancies that had been afflicting her. If she had been alone in Oxford, nothing would have induced her to attend this lecture. Professor Carr still seemed to hold her In a spell. But with Peter by her side, her fears and misgivings had departed.

It was Peter who was now feeling the strain. That glimpse of Detective Inspector Graves emphasised that danger was still present, even in Oxford. Graves had declared quietly that he would have the man responsible for these moon murders under arrest within 48 hours. Nearly 24 hours of those 48 had passed. And the moon murderer was still at large. Of that talk with Graves, and his own ordeal with the moon children, he had told Jill nothing. And he was determined to keep silent for the present.

A spontaneous burst of applause told that Professor Edward Carr had entered the hall. The Vice-Chancellor himself was on the platform, and as the lithe, athletic figure of the professor, his grey, bushy hair carefully combed and giving to his intellectual features a distinguished appearance, took a seat, the two men bowed to each other.

The preliminaries were soon over. The Vice-Chancellor introduced the professor as "a colleague whose brilliant astronomical studies have brought him well-deserved fame all over Europe and America."

"Hear, hear!" nodded Edwin Kyne, still liverish, but happy.

"The subject of the lecture this afternoon," went on the Vice-Chancellor, "is the result of a lifetime of study and research by Professor Carr. It is entitled 'Power and the Universe,' and whereas I understand that much that is unorthodox will be expounded, the brilliant attainments of our esteemed colleague will be sufficient to assure its ready acceptance by astronomers all over the world."

"Ja! Ja!" agreed Dr. Heinmesch, happy to see a blackboard and some chalks upon the platform.

"I will now call upon Professor Edward Carr," concluded the Vice-Chancellor, himself leading another round of applause for the tall, powerful figure that was rising slowly from the chair.

The famous astronomer presented a striking figure as he towered above the audience, a sight suspicion of contempt in those arrogant, intellectual features. His keen eyes regarded all with an apparent,, lazy indifference. But they missed nothing. Peter felt Jill's hand clutch his own like a frightened child. But if Professor Carr had seen her in the audience, he gave no sign of it.

Quietly, but with the dogmatic tone of authority, the professor began his lecture. A sheaf of notes was before him, but only occasionally did he glance at them. He gave the appearance of a man who knew every phase of his subject. For the first fifteen minutes his talk was on an abstruse scientific plane which was meaningless to Peter Allister. Only the savants could follow the professor in these astronomical observations, and the blackboard, to the delight of Dr. Heinmesch, was soon covered with a series of mathematical formulae and equations.

During this period, Peter stole a glance over his shoulder in the direction of Detective-Inspector Graves. The Scotland Yard man was leaning forward, a concentrated frown on his fox-terrier face. He was worrying over a bone that was too tough to be bitten. But not for one moment did he permit his interest to flag.

The professor had passed through the theories of radiation, analysed them, and insisted that such radiation bombarding the spheres in the fashion of wireless waves must create a repercussion of power in themselves. The savants were nodding their agreement. Then the professor's voice took on a deeper timbre. There was a strong vibrancy in it that caused Peter instinctively to clutch the chair in which he was sitting.

"We assume that our sun is burning itself out, a giant conflagration in the sky." said Professor Carr. "The heat which generates life on this earth will, in the course of time, be denied us.

"What then? Annihilation? The end of all things? The day of doom?"

He paused, so it seemed, for dramatic effect.

"Let us consider the moon, gentlemen." There was a suave, almost contemptuous note in his voice now. "We are told that here is a dead world, a cinder heat), where everything is burnt out, and that this mass of lifeless ash hangs suspended in the sky as a warning of what our own world might become.

"Yet I would ask you to contemplate, gentlemen, the power, the titanic power that is still exercised by this so-called dead world that is only a quarter of a million miles away." The voice was rising to a crescendo. "In the middle of the great oceans tonight, at this very moment, great walls of water are rising, surging, drawn by the gravitational power of the moon. Those tides sweep with tremendous force towards the land masses. "We know that these huge waves travel and are forced into gulfs and bays until the huge volume of water rises In places to heights of forty to fifty feet. We in Britain know well the drama of the Severn bore. In the United States the Bay of Fundy is lashed by these same titanic tides. A great power, gentleman. A giant power which some puny humans have dared to imagine that they can harness. The power of the moon."

The vibrant voice recovered Itself. It became cautious, even critical. Watching the speaker intently. Peter was conscious of a struggle within that tall, lithe frame to control its own powerful forces.

"There has lately been some strange rumours of moon studies," continued the professor. "Astronomers will know how to treat them with the contempt they deserve. But for those people who would relegate the forces of the moon to a point that is negligible. I would like to expound some curious observations of my own."

The audience leaned forward, expectantly. What new moon theory was now to be launched?

"For the purposes of my latest observations," went on the professor, calmly, "I discarded the telescope for the seismograph. Not very long ago the terrible earthquake at Quetta, in India, was responsible for a heavy loss of life. I am not concerned with the numbers of the dead, or the property destroyed, deeply lamentable though it be. I only discover from a reading of the seismograph simultaneously with astronomical readings, that the great earthquake occurred when the moon was in the region of its closest approach to the earth."

Nods, and whispers of approbation greeted these remarks. Professor Carr seemed oblivious of them. He continued, the arrogant intellectuality of his features being more strongly marked.

"I am not alone in these observations that the power still inherent in the moon may cause disaster upon this earth. The moon not only causes tides in the oceans, it is capable of causing equally strong tides on the crust or the earth. Investigations reported by a distinguished scientist, Dr. Davidson, seem to give evidence that certain types of earthquakes occur at regular intervals, dependent upon the cycle of the moon. More recently Father Kodes has presented evidence that earthquakes are more numerous when the moon is nearest the earth than when it is more remote from us. Others, I must admit, have made extensive investigations with, conflicting results. I can only assure you, gentlemen, that in my own humble workshop. I have proved conclusively that the power of the moon is beyond the imagination of those engineers who glibly talk of harnessing the moon to the earth's needs."

The contempt in the professor's voice was ill-concealed. The vibrant tone caused an uneasy ripple to pass through the audience. As though conscious of it, the professor stopped for a few moments. Thai wise, cynical face regarded the savants as a tired schoolmaster might regard a class of dullards.

"But I have been speaking of theories, gentlemen, and what you need arc scientific facts. I propose, as soon as the curtains are drawn and the lights lowered, to show on the screen an enlarged photograph of a section of the moon's surface taken from that scientific Mecca of all astronomers, the Mount Wilson Observatory."

"Here... .here!" nodded the pleased Edwin Kyne.

All eyes turned towards the students who were busy drawing the curtains against the heavy windows of the hall. At the same time, a hissing and spluttering from the back of-the hall told of a lantern that was being prepared. Again Peter turned to steal a glance at Detective-Inspector Graves. The face of the Scotland Yard man was inscrutable. He watched the professor and the white screen that was being unrolled behind him.

"And now the lights, please!" said Professor Carr.

A click, and the hall was plunged into total darkness. A general laugh went up at this. Peter groped for Jill's arm, and held her tightly. The dominant motif in his mind was that the moon was at the full. At the full.

A hissing sound from the rear of the hall, and the moon seemed to leap out of the darkness upon the startled assembly. On the white sheet, at the side of which stood Professor Carr, appeared a large picture of part of the moon's surface. It was marvellously clear. The craters, the huge range of mountains, even the avalanches of volcanic dust seemed to be discernible. It was as though a wall of the room had fallen away and the puny humans seated on their chairs were on a balcony overlooking the mighty Alps of this dead world.

A tall, elongated shadow came athwart the lunar landscape. It was Professor Edward Carr, pointer in hand.

"You will observe, gentlemen," he said, quite clearly, "that you are now gazing at a section of the northern half of the moon. Here, in the centre, is the Mare Imbrium. The range of mountains which bounds it to the south-east is the Appenines. Pardon me for reiterating the points of a landscape that must be familiar to most of you."

His voice rose slightly. The pointer jerked downwards.

"And here, gentlemen, we reach the southern extremity of this range of mountains. There lies the vast crater, Eratosthenes. When I spoke of power a few minutes ago, I had in mind this "

He got no further. There was a loud, deafening report. Peter leaped to his feet. Jill was clutching him tightly. The acrid tang of powder came to all in that audience. And the elongated shadow of Professor Edward Carr lurched against that lunar landscape and seemed to be toppling into the giant crater.

"Lights! Lights!"

Peter knew that yelp of command. It came from Detective-Inspector Graves, who was within a few feet of the platform. Even as the yellow lamps came on, dazzling the audience, the Scotland Yard man was on the platform and bending over the prone figure of the professor. A group of scared savants scurried in the same direction. All eyes were centred on the hunched man lying at the foot of the white screen.

"Professor Carr! Speak!"

It was as though the Scotland Yard man would resurrect the dead.

And it appeared to have a miraculous effect. The prone figure stirred, and lifted a hand as if warding off a blow from the unseen. Graves seized the decanter of water from the table, and sprinkled some of it over the professor's face. Carr stirred, blinked and opened his eyes.

"Thank God, he's alive!" gasped the Vice-Chancellor.

"What... what happened?" stammered Professor Carr.

"Are you hurt?" demanded Graves.

"I ... I don't think so." The professor staggered to his feet. "Something... something like a blow knocked me down." He hung on to Graves for support. 'I'm all right now, thank you."

But the gaze of the Scotland Yard man had travelled to a point just above where the professor had been standing. Something had shattered and splintered the wall

"A bullet!"  commented Graves. "And deeply embedded, it will want some digging out."

"And meant for me?" quavered Professor Carr.

"Apparently," said Graves. He was studying the splintered wall close

The professor seemed badly shaken. He turned to the Vice-Chancellor.

'I'm afraid, sir, under the circumstances..." he began.

"Quite so, Carr. Quite so," the Vice-Chancelloor hastily assured him. He turned to the audience. "Gentlemen, there is no; need for alarm. Just an unfortunate explosion. The lecture, for the present, is postponed."

In muttering and whispering the audience began to disperse. Peter, who had stood with his arm protectingly about Jill, suddenly decided on a move towards the platform. But an imploring gesture from the scared girl at his side stopped him.

"Please, Peter!"

"Yes, you're right, Jill" he agreed. "Let us get out of here."

He joined the tail of the throng that was padding towards the exit. As he came to the door leading to the street, he saw Detective-Inspector Graves, leaning negligently against the doorway, but carefully scrutinising each one of the assembly who was leaving. Peter Allister and Graves came face to face.

"Another page to add to your dossier of the moon murders, inspector," ventured Peter.

"And a very interesting page, too," said the detective.

"You've twenty-four hours left In which to find the murderer," said Peter.

"Time enough," nodded the detective. "Don't forget my warning, young man. The moon is at the full to-night."

Peter heard a gasp as his side. It was from Jill. The damning phrase had clanged through her mind, bringing back all the fears and terrors of the previous night.

With a scowl at the Scotland Yard man, Peter hurried her into, the street. Alf Merryweather, seated at the wheel of his taxi, was waiting.

8 : Death In The Moon

IT SEEMED that the full moon, casting its silver radiance over the fretted spires, surging arches and Gothic buildings of Oxford had also effected queerly the inhabitants of that city.

Prowling the streets, gazing with sardonic eyes at equally sardonic gargoyles, Peter Allister had drifted from one alleyway to another. He had stumbled over young lovers pressed against the crumbling walls, heard strange whispers from ill-lit doorways, and at one point came across a vision that appeared to be a gargoyle, dropped from a buttress, and alive. It was a lean hungry cat whose head had delved into a discarded can of salmon and had become jammed. Blindly helplessly, the cat scurried across the moonlit road, the can looking a huge snout seeking the gutter.

From lighted windows he had heard the chatter and laughter of students. Somewhere a piano tinkled jazz behind a medieval facade. An old man with grey beard, a huge quarto folio beneath his arm, sneaked into a grinning doorway like Cagliostro himself. And in another street, apparently rooted to the pavement, a hunchback stood and stared at the moon.

A medieval city in moonlight. As he plunged into still darker streets where the twisted branches of old trees fretted the pavements with writhing shadows, a dog bayed and howled like a lost soul. Peter shivered at the sound, but continued his restless padding of the streets.

Eventually, he emerged into the street with the long dead wall that flanked Magdalen College. He realised, with a shiver, that his tired feet were leading him inevitably towards that Frankenstein laboratory of Professor Edward Carr. For a moment he hesitated. Then he plunged through a doorway and made his way across a quadrangle to where lights blazed from the windows of those rooms where he had first heard the uncanny moon music.

But on the cold stone landing he was confronted by a man, a powerful man whom he recognised as Professor Edward Carr's personal servant. His name was Jukes, and Peter recalled the fixed surly grin on the man's face.

"Is it the professor your wanting?" confronted Jukes.

Peter nodded.

"He can't be seen to-night, by no one," went on the servant. "He's going to work on some special astronomy observations all through the night. I've just taken him his supper, and he asked me to lock the door, take away the key and see that he's not disturbed until the morning."

And still grinning, Jukes held up the rusty iron key.

"Working all night on astronomy..." muttered Peter.

"That's what the professor said," agreed Jukes. He was straddled across the staircase still holding that iron key.

"Then the professor has suffered no ill effects from his— er— accident earlier on this evening?" asked Peter, conventionally.

Jukes shook his surly head. "

"Not that I can see," he replied.

"Thank you. Good night."

"Good night."

Once again Peter crossed the quadrangle. Before leaving he gave a last glance over his shoulder. The rooms of Professor Edward Carr still blazed with light. He could visualise that white coated figure, bending over instruments. the grey leonine hair ruffled, the powerful hands firm and controlled. The scientist at work.

Emerging into that side street again he saw that it was deserted except for a familiar figure lounging near an old-fashioned lamp clamped to the wall. He went towards it. The figure did not move, but a quiet voice spoke.

"You're a restless soul to-night, young man."

It was Detective-Inspector Graves, bowler-hatted, and buttoned up for duty.

"I suppose I am, inspector," said Peter. "It's that damned moon. Have you got a cigarette?"

The Scotland Yard man obliged. As the match flared, the hollow cheeks and hungry face was shown in sharp relief.

"Been visiting?" asked Graves, casually.

Peter shrugged his shoulders.

"I thought I would call on the professor, and see how he was."

"And you saw him?"

"No. His servant tells me that he's all right, and that he's settled down to a night's scientific work. Insisted on being locked in his own rooms."

"An extraordinary man, the professor," commented Graves. "And a lucky one."

"Lucky?"

"One of the few astronomers who has escaped the moon murderer. A baffling case, young man. First poison is used, then a dagger, and finally a pistol. Whoever the assassin may be, he believes in varying his methods."

"You're forgetting the infernal bomb that was used at Jena," said Peter.

"I'm not forgetting the Jena affair," retorted the detective. "It insists upon being remembered. It is the piece of the puzzle that won't fit."

"Ah. then your jigsaw is nearly complete?"

"Nearly, but not quite."

"What are you waiting for inspector?"

The Scotland Yard man gave a glance at the sky.

"For the end of the full moon," he said quietly. "If this night passes without murder. I shall be content."

"And to-morrow you arrest the moon murderer?"

"To-morrow," said the detective decisively. "But for tonight, I must watch and see that no harm comes to Professor Edward Carr."

"You think he is in danger?" asked Peter.

There was an inscrutable smile on the face of the Scotland Yard man.

"We are all in danger until the full moon Is over," he replied, cryptically. "Good night, Allister. Get to bed and lock yourself in your room. I'll be calling on you to-morrow."

And Graves turned away to pace slowly along the street.

Peter stared after him for a moment, shrugged his shoulders, and went on towards the High. Even that wide street seemed to have an unusual and macabre aspect beneath the moon's rays. Quickly, he sought out the flat where Jill was waiting for him. He found her sitting there, nervous and taut. She gave a gasp of relief when she saw Peter.

"My darling where have you been?" she shivered in his embrace. "I feel so helpless just sitting here and waiting. It's like a horrible nightmare in which you see something dreadful happening and find you can't move a muscle to prevent it."

He kissed her, tenderly.

"It will all be over by the morning," he said, with more confidence than he felt.

"But there are hours, long dreadful hours before the morning," she pleaded. "And all this time I feel that John might be in terrible danger. I know it's silly of me to talk like this, but I can't help feeling that John needs our help."

He went over to the sideboard and mixed a brandy and soda.

"Drink this," he insisted. "John is sure to be all right. He is in Wales, whereas the battlefield is here in Oxford. I've just bad a talk with Inspector Graves. He's on guard outside the professor's house."

"Does he expect another attack on Professor Carr?"

"Looks like it. Anyhow, he seems certain that he will have his hands on the moon murderer to-morrow."

She gulped the brandy and paced the room. There was a distraught gleam in her eyes. Her hands clenched and unclenched.

"I wish I could believe you," she sighed. "I wish I could believe that John was safe."

Peter glanced at the clock. It was eleven o'clock.

"He's probably safe asleep in bed at the moment," he said, reassuringly, "But it's easy enough to find out. Why not telephone the inn where your brother is staying?"

The idea excited her.

"Why not?" she replied. "I have the address and the telephone number. I've even stayed at the inn one weekend when I went climbing with John. I'll get them at once."

In the relief of action she seized the telephone and asked for the number.

"It's a real mountain climbers inn," she explained to Peter as they waited. "It lies at Pen-y-pass. Lots of rock climbers use it, for it is near some of the best and yet most difficult faces of Snowdon. A real retreat from civilisation. I can understand why John chose it for his astronomical studies."

She had regained something of her earlier happiness. Then the telephone rang. Her face paled, and she grabbed it eagerly.

"Pen-y-pass hotel?" she queried. "I want to speak to—John Bretherton.... Yes, Bretherton."

Someone was speaking. Her face went a shade paler.

"But he's staying there, isn't he?" she faltered.

Again the distant voice. A look of dumb despair came over her face.

"I... I'll telephone again then," she said, and put back the receiver."

"Well?" asked Peter.

"He's not there," she said, in a hushed voice. "He went out an hour ago. Said he was going to stay the night on the mountain. Some moon observations."

Peter shrugged his shoulders. "Well, there's nothing really to worry about," he said.

She shook her head.

"But there's something else."

"What ?"

"The innkeeper told me that someone had telephoned John earlier In the evening. It was a call from Oxford."

"From Oxford... here?" Peter felt a chill creeping up his spine.

She nodded.

"It appears John was terribly excited after the telephone conversation. He had a hurried dinner, collected his instruments, and set off for the mountain. Oh, Peter, I feel certain he's going to his death."

She was weeping, unrestrainedly. Peter took her in his arms, and tried to comfort her. In the midst of this scene Alf. Merryweather arrived. He was in a dubious mood.

"Lor' lummee!" he began. "This is a poor suburb for a feller to enjoy hisself. Even the pubs stink of age. I been to a cinema. The only new place here. Saw a beautiful picture of a murder. More than one murder, too."

"Shut up !" snapped Pater.

Alf looked at him in pained surprise. "Sorry, mister. I begs the lady's pardon. 'Ave you 'ad a tiff?"

But Peter was staring at the clock. An idea had occurred to him. He swung round on the taxi-driver.

"Have you ever been to Wales, Alf?"

"Wales"? Where is that ?" asked the astonished taxi-driver.

"You're going there to-night," decided Peter. "Get your taxi out and fill her up with petrol. We've got to reach Snowdon before the morning."

"Snowdon! 'Ere, just a moment, mister," protested Alf. "Even that old taxi of mine 'as its limits. We ain't climbing no mountains."

"We're going to Snowdon." said Peter decisively. "Get your cab out and be back here in ten minutes at the outside. Jill, get some rugs. You're coming along, too."

"Darling!" she cried, through her tears.

"Gawblimey! First Oxford, then Snowdon," grumbled Alf. "They fink I'm a bloomin' Malcolm Campbell and my car a blinkin' Bluebird."

But he tightened up his many overcoats and plodded downstairs in search of his taxi.

It was a crazy journey over two hundred miles. By midnight they were jolting into the green heart of England. Only the dubious headlights of the taxi turned the trees into black spectres, and the hedges into thick walls that hemmed them in as the roads narrowed.

Peter sat with his arm about Jill as they sped through the countryside. Alf. Merryweather and his cab were excelling themselves. The spirit of adventure had entered into the taxi-driver. He was recalling old war songs that he had sung with the men outside a place that he called

"Wipers." These he sung in a cracked and tuneless voice as he urged the taxi to further efforts.

"Faster, man ! Faster !" shouted Peter from inside the cab.

"Lor' lummee! I'm taking this 'ere taxi on to Brooklands racing track if it comes through. Look nice, won't I if I goes into the boss at London and 'ands him a spare wheel and a horn, and says, 'All that's left of the pore old cab, boss.' "

And he cackled loudly, sounding the horn at nothing.

"I'll buy the damned taxi," shouted Peter. "But go faster!"

"Righto, guv'nor!"

They passed through Worcester. The towering spire of the cathedral was lancing the night sky like a dagger silvered in the moonlight. Jill shivered, and nestled closer to Peter. Streets of dark houses slithered past. They caught a glimpse of a policeman flashing a light against a locked door, and a few minutes later they were in the country again;

The terrain had changed. The taxi was groping towards the hills. Alf struggled with his gears, the engine clattered and screamed as if in agony, but still they rattled on. They were taking the line of the Welsh marches, that road which skirted the hills and revealed silhouetted ruins of castles at moments. Rabbits scuttered across the road. Alf yelped at them, delightedly.

"Won't the old girl be pleased if I bring 'ome a fresh rabbit for tea."

And he launched the cab in murderous zig-zags along the road.

"Don't play the fool!" shouted Peter, roused from a fitful doze by this jolting. "Get a move on!"

Alf muttered to himself.

"Picked me up at Hyde Park, he did. Brought me from the comfy streets and a nice 'ot cup of cawfee to this godforsaken place overrun wiv rabbits."

It was getting darker, now. The moon, the full moon, was dropping below the horizon. And blackness, like velvet, was stretching a cloak over the countryside. Tired, and worn out, Jill was fast asleep. Her head leaned trustfully against Peter's shoulder. He watched that baleful moon slipping lower and lower into the earth. He had a savage desire to see it buried deep, and to stamp upon the grave.

At the moment it disappeared, there came a loud report. Startled out of her sleep, Jill gave a, stifled scream of terror. But it was only a well-worn tyre that had burst. Alf jammed on the brakes, switched off the engine, muttered a series of curses, and got down to examine the damage.

Peter followed him. He discovered Alf striking matches and gazing ruefully at the burst tyre.

Not much good, that ain't," he declared. " 'Ave to put a spare tyre on."

"Have you got one?"

"Yus."

"Thank God for that."

Alf began to remove one of his overcoats. Then he rummaged in a decrepit tool box beneath his seat.

"Don't know whether this jack works," he declared, ominously, producing an antiquated piece of ironmongery.

"Get on with it, anyhow," commanded Peter.

Alf spat on his hands, and with the slow deliberation of the workman, stretched himself on the ground. Jill had joined them in the road. It was pitch dark, and a cold wind came from the west.

"What's the time, Peter?"

"Just gone four o'clock."

"Where are we ?"

"About fifty miles from Snowdon. And by the way things are going, it looks as though we shall have to walk there."

Alf was muttering and clanking with tools beneath the car.

'Can't get this jack to work nohow," he spluttered.

Peter lent his aid. The piece of ironmongery refused to work. Both men were sweating and pushing at the car when Jill's voice came to them.

"There's a car coming towards us, Peter."

"Then let's try and stop it," decided Peter, jumping to his feet. "The driver may have a jack that works."

Two dazzling shafts of light were cutting the darkness. They fingered the sky as the car came up a hill. They heard the powerful roar of the engine. The car was travelling at high speed.

It topped the hill before them. The headlights came upon them in all their blinding fullness. Peter staggered into the middle of the road and waved his arms, desperately. His long lean figure was silhouetted.

The engine of the approaching car did not falter. The high pitched whine continued. It was leaping towards the gesticulating figure with deadly intent.

"Peter!" shrieked the girl.

Blinded by those powerful headlights which seemed to be hungrily devouring him, Peter leaped for safety. He was only just in time. With a thundering roar the car swirled past. Wind and dust came beating against him as he lay, half stunned, in the roadway.

"Peter! Are you hurt ?"

Jill was bending over him.

"No, only winded," he spluttered. "By heaven, that driver seemed determined to kill me. He must have been travelling at ninety miles an hour."

The deep-throated roar of the car could be heard, disappearing in the distance.

"A racing car, it were," declared Alf, materialising in the darkness. "And a madman at the wheel. No cap. Hair streaking in the wind. Lor' lummee! I thought you was for it that time, guv'nor."

"So did I," declared Peter. "Where's that cursed jack ?"

Searching for it, they fell over the piece of ironmongery. Alf gave it a vicious kick, and then moaned with pain. But when he took up the jack again, he chortled.

"That did it. It works now."

In ten minutes a new tyre had been placed on the wheel. They resumed their adventurous journey. Shrewsbury was reached, with its black and white houses, and the clattering taxi began the ascent towards the hills.

Dawn, like the greying face of a dead man was streaking the horizon. The sound of waterfalls and rippling streams came to their ears. Their progress was slow but sure. Then, through a-grey mist, broke the sun. It revealed the dark, sloping masses of the hills. A fresh breeze whipped their faces. A sheepdog rushed from a field and followed them in a mad scamper, barking lustily.

At seven o'clock Peter pointed to a jagged peak lost in a cloud. "Snowdon." he said, quietly.

"Thank God!" said Jill, fervently.

"Lor' lummee! So that's Snowdon!" chuckled Alf.

Thirty minutes later they drew up alongside the Pen-y-pass inn.

Inside the inn, the morning's work had already begun. A maid was laying one big table for breakfast. Cows were being milked and the proprietor, in shirt-sleeves, was busily superintending.

He greeted the strange trio who had arrived in a London taxi warmly. In this mountain inn, used chiefly by climbers, he was used to all types of queer people.

"Mister Bretherton!" he remarked, in response to Jill's anxious inquiry. "No, he hasn't come back, whatever! He said he would be in for breakfast at five o'clock, indeed he did. And it is now seven, look you, and he is still on the mountain."

Jill gazed round the little entrance hall. It was familiar to her. What she did see, for the first time, was the mountain stretcher, kept there in readiness for accidents. The glimpse of that stretcher increased her fears.

"If he's on the mountain, he will still be in the quarry," she said, decisively. "I'll go and look for him."

"It's not an easy climb for a young leddy, indeed it isn't," warned the innkeeper, in his sing-song Welsh accent.

"I'll go with her," declared Peter. He turned to Alf, who seemed swollen out of all proportion in his mass of overcoats. "Get yourself some breakfast, Alf. We may be driving back to Oxford again, soon."

"Lor' lummee!" groaned the taxidriver. "I never knew this was such a big island until I began driving you about. You're not thinking of going to Scotland termorrer by any chance?"

The appetising smell of bacon and eggs lured him towards the dining room. Peter prepared to set off along a path leading up the mountains.

"Maybe if you see Mister Bretherton you'll give him this telegram ?" said the innkeeper. "It arrived a few moments ago, indeed it did?"

"I will," nodded Peter, and slipped the flimsy orange missive into his pocket.

Jill was already heading towards , the path. Peter scrambled after her. Her eyes were anxious, her jaw set. She said nothing, but strode eagerly forward.

Twenty minutes' trudge brought them to a cold, dead-looking sheet of water. Closed in on all sides by the heights, r its surface was unruffled by the wind.

It mirrored the peak of Snowdon, now stark against the sky. Peter had a grim vision of what that mountain lake must have looked like beneath the full moon.

He struggled on after Jill.

"There's the old quarry!" suddenly pointed Jill. "It's not been used for many years. That's where John has his laboratory."

"Let's give him a shout," suggested Peter.

He straddled his legs, cupped his hands against his mouth and shouted.

"Hey! Bretherton! Hallo, there!"

"... hallo, there!" echoed the stone cliffs.

"Bretherton! Are you there?"

"... you there!" winged back the echo.

The sound died away. A deep silence, broken only by the lonely cry of a plover, enfolded them. Jill was trembling violently, and scrambled like one possessed towards the stone building that was the disused quarry. She disappeared within the walls.

Desperately, Peter panted after her. He topped the last slope and stumbled, breathlessly through a gaping hole. A strange scene was revealed. Littering the ground were the smashed pieces of a telescope. Glass and metal had been ground as though by a giant's heel. A rucksack, ripped open violently, with torn pieces fluttering in the breeze, an old cap and a smashed storm-lantern completed the wreckage. And on a lump of stone sat Jill, weeping.

"He's dead!" she cried. "I know he's dead. "We've come too late."

There was no sign of Bretherton himself. Peter went about among the smashed astronomical instruments, seeking some clue. Suddenly he stood still. His eyes had seen something. Jill also was staring horrified at the same spot. Blood, still wet, was staining one of the white stones.

Swiftly, Peter turned. Less than a yard away was another bloodstain. It led through the broken walls and towards the face of the mountain. He began to follow it. Jill was close at his side.

Soon, they were climbing. Not an easy path. It seemed strange that a wounded, bleeding man should be climbing upwards instead of downwards.

Peter's city shoes were soon torn and gaping. The peculiar bluish grey dust of Snowdon was covering them. With a heel of her shoe torn away, Jill climbed after him.

He emerged on to a ledge. His face was gray, and streaked with sweat. So far the trail had been easy. But now the bloodstains were absent. He cast about vainly, for the scent. He edged along the ledge, conscious that there was  a sickening drop of over a hundred feet there. The ledge fell away in a sheer cliff.

He went as far as he could. A huge boulder barred his progress. He started upwards. A cliff, almost unclimbable, towered above him. Below the ledge, the cliff tumbled with a mass of boulders to a ravine.

"Bretherton! Are you there?" he yelled, suddenly.

"....you there!" came back that dreadful echo.

Jill joined her voice to his.

"John! John!"

"...John!" came the echo.

Baffled, Peter stared about him. His gaze went downwards. It seemed that something was fluttering there, in the ravine beneath. He looked again. There was something fluttering.

"Don't move!" he commanded to Jill. "I'm going to climb down into that ravine. You must stay here."

"Please be careful, Peter!" she sobbed.

He began the descent, cautiously. Shale crumbled and slid away beneath his broken shoes. He clung desperately to tufts of grass, found an occasional foothold, and lowered himself slowly. It was a hair-raising descent, and took him ten minutes. Eyes glazed with sweat, he looked about him.

A fluttering silk scarf was less than ten yards away. He stumbled towards it. Then he stopped, horrified. Lying there, head brutally battered, was the dead body of John Bretherton. The eyes were wide open in a ghastly stare. A trickle of blood had dried against his mouth. He had the appearance
of a man who had fallen sheer in a desperate climb. The body was doubled, as though it had crashed against those boulders. Peter stood there, helpless, by the side of his dead friend.

"Peter!... Peter!"

Jill was calling to him. He looked up. She was lying prone on- the ledge staring downwards into the ravine. Bui she could see nothing. The emotion of a man who knows that his loved one was going to be shattered by this news overwhelmed him.

"I'm coming back to you, Jill!" he sobbed.

Swiftly, recklessly, he began the climb out of the ravine.

The next half hour was a terrible one for Peter Allister. He never forgot the expression on Jill's face as he told her haltingly, of the dreadful find in the ravine. Yet she neither sobbed nor cried. Only her features set in a hard, cruel fashion.

"He seemed to have fallen, climbing," he muttered.

"He was killed... murdered by the moon maniac!" she almost shouted.

He tried to soothe her. She disdained his help, and began to stride back along the path that led to the quarry. As they came near those white walls with the smashed instruments within, she collapsed, weeping, against Peter.

"My poor... brother!" she sobbed.

Peter gently lifted her in his arms, and began to carry her towards the inn. They were seen from the distance. The innkeeper and Alf hurried to meet them. Briefly, Peter told them the news. The innkeeper hurried away to telephone the police. Alf, with Peters help, carried Jill back to the inn. They placed her on a bed. The innkeeper's wife, a motherly soul, busied herself over the weeping girl. Peter walked into the lounge, and watched silently a group of men taking the stretcher out of the corner

He felt sick, and ill. He sat down as the wave of nausea assaulted him.

"Drink this, guv'nor! You look as though you needed it."

It was Alf, with a glass of brandy in his hand.

"Thanks, Alf."

He gulped it. The colour came back to his cheeks.

"That's better, guv'nor," cheered Alf. "And what now?"

What now? Peter wondered. He suddenly recalled the telegram that he  should have been delivered to Bretherton.

Well, John Bretherton would never read that telegram. On a sudden impulse Peter took it out of his pocket and tore open the orange envelope.

The words danced before his eyes.

Regret to report your observations wrong. Carefully searched region you mention through my instruments during the night. No results. Edward Carr.

The telegram had been handed in at Oxford at six o'clock that morning and was marked "Special... urgent."

"Edward Carr ... Oxford!" muttered Peter. He turned swiftly to Alf Merryweather. "Alf! We're going to drive back to Oxford right now."

"Righto, guv'nor!"

"And see what speed records you can break."

"Leave it to me, guv'nor."

Peter sought out the innkeeper. He begged him to look after Jill until he came back.

"Leave her to the missus. Indeed she'll be all right, sir," replied the innkeeper.

Five minutes later, the old taxi was hurtling down the pass towards the road that led to Oxford. Inside sat Peter Allister, a grim, cruel expression on his youthful face, and a crumpled telegram clenched in his hand.

9:  Journeys End In...

AGAIN ALF MERRYWEATHER and his taxi-cab excelled themselves. It was not yet eleven o'clock when the weather-stained dusty taxi entered the High at Oxford. The engine came to a clanking standstill outside Magdalen College.

"That's done it, guvnor," declared Alf, sorrowfully. "It'll take more than petrol and kick in the stomach to start that engine again."

But Peter was already out of the cab and striding across the quadrangle towards the rooms occupied by Professor Edward Carr. Once again, on the stone staircase, he encountered the servant, Jukes.

"You can't see the professor," said the man with the surly grin. "Been working all night, he has. I unlocked his door and took him his breakfast at seven o'clock this morning. Fair done up, he looked."

"Seven o'clock, eh?" murmured Peter. "That would be after you had handed in the telegram that the professor had given you the night previously."

"Well, what of it?" demanded Jukes. "I obeyed orders. The professor gave me the telegram before he settled down for the night's work and said that it must be handed in for special service at six o'clock the next morning."

Peter smiled.

"Thank you, Jukes. I'm glad you remember it. And now, stand aside. I'm going to see the professor."

"You can't," said Jukes. "He's resting. He told me he doesn't want to see anyone."

"Will you please tell him that I've come from Snowdon," declared Peter. "I think you'll find that he'll see me then."

Jukes hesitated. Then he shrugged his shoulders.

"All right. Wait here. But I don't expect he'll see you."

And he trudged slowly up the stone steps to knock discreetly at the professor's door.

A moment later he reappeared.

"The professor says he can give you five minutes," he said, surlily.

"Five minutes will be quite enough," said Peter, grimly, and pushed his way into the room.

After the sunshine of the quadrangle, those rooms seemed dark. A grey gloom enshrouded everything. Peter hesitated. A door clicked, and the huge figure of Professor Carr appeared. He was in a dark red dressing-gown. His features were tired and lined. The scientist seemed to have aged in a night.

"So it's you, my young friend," he nodded. "What's this I hear about you having come from Snowdon That's a goodish distance to travel, isn't it? I seem to recollect that you were at my lecture yesterday afternoon."

"It's not such a long distance if you have a fast car," said Peter, quietly.

The professor drew a hand across his tired eyes.

"No, I suppose not," he replied, listlessly.

"But why have you come to me direct from Snowdon."

"I wanted to tell you that John Bretherton's body was found smashed on the slopes of Snowdon early this morning," said Peter.

The professor seemed to sway under the shock.

"John Bretherton... dead!" he muttered. "Good heavens, how awful. But how did it happen? A climbing accident?"

"It was made to look that," said Peter Allister. "But I knew that it was murder."

The professor stared blankly at the dishevelled, travel-stained man who stood before him. Once again his hand crossed those tired eyes.

"Really, my young friend !" he murmured. "Don't you think you are losing a sense of proportion ? I can understand that the shock of discovering John Bretherton's body must have upset your emotional reflexes. But to talk of murder..."

"It was murder," almost shouted Peter. "A moon murder. And it may interest you to know, professor, that I have learned who this assassin is."

A tolerant smile crossed the professor's face.

"This is interesting. Very interesting," he murmured. "And may I inquire who is this murderer who appears to have combined astronomy and assassination ?"

"You may." nodded Peter. "For it happens to be yourself."

The two men stared at each other. That tolerant smile had not left the professor's face. It seemed, indeed, to have frozen there. From the quadrangle beneath they could hear a student calling to another.

"Suppose you sit down," suggested Professor Carr, quietly.

"Thank you."

Peter sank into the armchair. He was watching his man, closely. But the tall, athletic figure in the red dressing-gown did not seem in the slightest degree perturbed. He lounged easily against the mantelshelf, fumbling in his pocket for a pipe. He sucked it noisily, filled it, and took a spill from a bowl on the mantelshelf, lit it at the fire, and began to smoke with evident enjoyment.

"I suppose, my young friend, that you have reasons for suggesting that I am a murderer," said Professor Carr carelessly.

"Several reasons."

"May I ask for one?"

Peter pointed a damning finger.

"Those climbing boots over there, for example."

The professor jerked his head around. In a corner of the room were a pair of heavy boots, smothered in a blue-grey dust.

"You notice my boots are coloured in the same fashion," went on Peter, grimly. "It is the dust of Snowdon's slopes."

The smile had gone from the face of the professor when he turned.

"That is very clever observation on your part, young man. But maybe you can explain how I happen to have spent the night working in my locked laboratory here in Oxford with, I believe, a Scotland Yard man wandering the streets, and yet transport myself to Snowdon and there murder— you did say murder, didn't you?— a young colleague with whom I have worked on astronomical studies. Really, Allister, we astronomers may talk of space time, but we haven't yet discovered how to enter with our bodies into those mathematical regions. And Snowdon is— let me see— some 200 miles away, is it not?"

"You ought to know," said Peter, quietly. "You travelled that road twice last night in your racing-car, that red-painted Alfa Romeo of which you are so proud. On my way here I called at the garage where you house the car. I managed to get into the shed, of which you have the key. And the car was smothered in dust and grime."

The professor's eyes had narrowed. His pipe had gone out. He placed another spill in the fire and puffed away again.

"And, of course," he went on in his languid voice. "I achieved all these adventures after having spirited myself out of a locked laboratory of which my servant Jukes possesses the only key."

"That was easy enough," said Peter, indicating the windows. "And the ivy roots were easy enough for an experienced climber like yourself to reach the ground. You waited until the watching Scotland Yard man had turned his back. Then you slipped out, reached the garage, took the car, and began to race the road leading to Wales and Snowdon."

Professor Carr laughed. It needed another spill to relight his pipe.

"And I suppose my friend Bretherton waited calmly for me to come and murder him, eh?" he chuckled.

"A telephone call from that instrument in the corner," nodded Peter, "might easily persuade Bretherton to go to the quarry on the slopes of Snowdon, anticipating that you would meet him there with the object of checking his observations. Actually you traded on your position as a professor to encourage Bretherton to meet you, having warned him not to say anything about your call to anyone at the inn. I do know that Bretherton received a telephone call last night from Oxford, and it will be easy enough to check up at the local exchange if you put through a trunk call to the Pen-y-pass inn."

"My dear young friend, you have the makings of an excellent detective, the sort one reads about in those absurd stories. But please go on. Maybe I am responsible for other murders."

"You are," said Peter, grimly. "I strongly suspect that you tried to murder me last night when you were racing back to Oxford in your car, having accomplished what you set out to do."

"What a pity I didn't succeed," said the professor.

"A great pity. You had been to the foot of Snowdon, parked your car in a hiding place, and gone up the mountain path to the old quarry where. Bretherton with his instruments was waiting for you. There you greeted him. It is possible that he bent down to peer through the telescope. That was your opportunity. You picked up one of the heavy stones conveniently at your feet, and crashed it down upon his head. You murdered him, brutally.

"Then, in cunning fashion, you hoisted the body over your shoulders, and began to climb up the mountain. It must have been a terrible effort for you. But you were strong enough. You have been something of a climber in your time. And so, eventually you reached a ledge. It was a convenient ledge with a drop of about a hundred feet. You dragged the body to the ledge and let it topple over. The dead man fell into the ravine below. Any bruises about the head could be explained by the fall. But you forgot, professor, that a damning trail of blood was being left by the corpse as you climbed. You couldn't see that in the dark, could you?"

There was a fierce determination in Peter's voice. Beneath the tempestuous attack, the professor seemed to be staggering, weakly. One of those powerful hands were clutching the mantelshelf for support. The head, with its straggling grey hair, was bowed. But he pulled himself together for a last defiant effort.

"And assuming that all this is true, young man, what was the motive of the crime ?"

Peter, his gaze held and fascinated by the tired but brilliant face, shook his head.

"That is what I can't imagine. It baffles me."

There came a deep-throated chuckle from the professor.

"Supposing I hazard a few questions," he said. "Let me contemplate myself as a murderer— mind you, this is pure supposition— and try to imagine why I should commit a series of murders."

"I'm listening," said Peter.

The professor sank into a chair facing his accuser. Once again he lit his pipe with a spill and, puffing noisily, began to speak.

"You are, I believe, a musician. You are a great musician only if you are prepared to die for your music. I am a scientist, an astronomer. I am prepared to kill for science. Does that sound contradictory? Be patient with me and I will explain.

"I flatter myself that I have acquired a reputation as a scientist. It was not easy. In these days when any jackanapes staring at the sky may discern and name after himself a new comet that has come into our ken, only hard work, constant study, and an unremitting watch on the sky can achieve a reputation worth while in astronomy. It was a hard way, but it was the way I chose as a young man. On that basis I built up my reputation. I achieved a professorship at Oxford.

"Ambition achieved ? Not at all. Once I had gazed into boundless space, my ambitions were boundless. It may be that I became drunk with, the majesty of the universe. It certainly taught me what puny humans we are, what a miserable speck in infinity is this boasted earth of ours. I was among the first to assert that our spawning life on this globe was an accident. An ironic mistake on the part of some creator whose hand had faltered for a moment. We were but maggots crawling on a rotten little piece of decaying matter."

Mesmerized by those gleaming eyes, conscious of that taut yet wracked body that was before him, understanding came in a flash to Pete Allister. The man was insane. Professor Edward Carr was a moon maniac.

As though guessing his thoughts, the professor cackled aloud. That insane laugh chilled the young man.

"You think I am mad? Well, perhaps I am. The pulp I find in the minds about me seems as unintelligent as that of sleeping children I became disgusted with the limits of the human brain. Not men, but supermen were wanted. Great minds should rule this miserable dung-heap of a world. And for a time, I sought in vain for minds that were attuned to the great mathematical brain that lay behind the mechanism of the universe."

For a moment, the man was inspired. Then, all the life seemed to ebb out of him. He was just a tired, old man whose brain had cracked. He rose, unsteadily, from his chair.

"I must have a drink," he drawled, wearily. "Will you join me?"

"No thanks."

Peter watched him as he poured out a brandy and soda. There was a careful deliberation in his actions. He returned, glass in hand, to the chair. He sipped a little of the liquid, and it seemed to revive him. Once again, he lit his pipe with a spill.

"Where was I ? Oh, yes, I remember now. I was telling you of my search for the superman. Yes, the superman. I soon realised that he could not be found on this earth. The minds of men were too limited to grasp the great conceptions, the dazzling visions that were in my own mind. Ah, those were splendid days and nights when I set to work, like Frankenstein to create for myself a superman. Yes, that was my conception. I would create a superman. There was no need for me to go to the charnel house, no desire for flesh and blood. That was too crude. My superman was to be created out of the highest realms of thought— from pure mathematics. Those symbols by which only scientists could grope in the unseen world, would create for me the superman of my dream. Figures..., figures ... figures !"

The words dribbled from his lips. He took a deep drink from the glass in his hand.

"No creator had dared what I now dare achieve," he went on in that tired listless voice, yet which still retained something of yesterday's vibrancy. "Already astronomers such as myself had put on the black cap of science and condemned God to death, to annihilation. Out of the stuff of our minds had we imagined God: out of those same minds, attuned to the great universe about us, did we now destroy God.

"I toiled, night after night. It meant years of work. By applying mathematics to the great universe, I was able, in time to prove conclusively that life existed in other worlds than ours. It was a terrific conception. Did not Descartes assert that he had proved the existence of God by scientific logic? I proved the existence of life, of minds greater than ours, by pure mathematics. I knew, as surely as if I produced a creature of flesh and blood before your eyes, that my superman existed— on the moon !"

He roared the words out triumphantly.

Once again he was possessed. His eyes blazed. The powerful body trembled. Peter shrank back.

But the madman was oblivious to him now. On he went, dribbling forth a strange hotch-potch of astronomical science, black magic, and lunacy.

"I let my mind travel in space-time. I soared away from this miserable body and this disgusting earth. I was a voyager In the universe. There, the captain of a ship, I took my longitude and latitude. I knew the elements of navigation in space-time. I had my charts, my maps. And I was able I to place my finger on a speck on that chart of the universe and declare that there existed the superman, the brains of an all-powerful, conquering race who had been discerned by my own puny brain expanding like the universe itself. There, in the crater of Eratosthenes, amidst the lunar alps, were secreted the creatures of my creation.

"I had made one of the greatest discoveries in science. I had pushed the astronomical limbo of Galilee aside, kicked it aside. It was a brave new world, a world of mighty brains that I― I was about to reveal to the miserable humans about me. These supermen possessed power. They could, if they wished, annihilate the earth. There was nothing they could not do. From out of the crater of Eratosthenes, they looked upon the earth and its scurrying humans, as a man might gaze upon an ant heap and laugh. Laugh."

Once again that horrible cackle broke from him. He drained the glass at one gulp and, with a quick gesture, sent it smashing into the fire.

"I knew then that I was one of the elect among men. I was accepted by the supermen of the moon as one of themselves. The power they possessed would be in my power. And it was for me to use for ill or good. I can remember the night when I made my great discovery. It set my mind ablaze. I went forth from these rooms, and ran to the meadows beyond. I knelt in the wet grass and worshipped the moon. I was dazzled at my own creation.

"I saw myself loaded with honours, rich, and acclaimed by a scientific world when I made by discovery known. Kings and empires would bow before me. Einstein was a mere muddler in mathematics; Newton a primitive savage standing in awe of things which only I could explain. I came back to my rooms in the dawn. I slept, exhausted, for several hours. When I awoke, the cablegram was on my table. It was from an astronomer in New York. The words of that cablegram are still burned in my brain. They said: 'Respectfully request your presence here in New York. Would like your opinion on important discoveries I made in Crater Eratosthenes, lunar alps.' It was signed 'Mayer.'

"I reeled away from the damning words. Something snapped within me. I stormed about my laboratory, smashing and destroying. I only knew that the supermen of my creation, the beautiful, all-powerful monsters of my mathematics, had been detected by some jackanapes in New York with an expensive toy of a telescope.

"Later, I calmed down. I still realised that the power, the honours, the riches that might have been mine were about to be filched away by a scientific amateur, one of these puny humans with the brain of a child. It was then my mission was revealed to me. I would defend my creations. As a god among men, I would be a jealous god. The superman of the moon would give me power to destroy their enemies. I determined to destroy."

A spasm of pain shot across his face. His body was shaken. Peter Allister jumped to his feet. A hand waved him back, feebly.

"Too late, my young friend. I am dying. Yes, poison, in the drink. The same death that I delivered to Phillip Allister, your step-brother, in his glass of brandy. The moon death. The death I decreed on all who dared to let the vulgar gaze of mankind be directed to the creation of mine.

"I killed in New York. I killed in London, at Greenwich. The battlefield expanded. I enlisted moon children to help me. The supermen helped me. Their brains devised the cunning plots. I discovered that dealing out death gave one a greater sense of power than dealing out life. Remember, my friend, that it is not life that is immortal, but death.

"But the fight wearied me. I began to falter. A fool who played the piano blundered across my path. Twice I tried to kill him, and failed. I heard whispers. Saw men glancing at me in curious fashion. They suspected me. Voices... voices everywhere. I felt a trap closing in on me. I tried desperately to sidetrack the suspicions by staging an attempt on my own life. Then young Bretherton blundered on my supermen. Night after night he was devouring the crater of Eratosthenes with his vulgar gaze. He had to die. He did die!"

What should have been a shout of triumph, was only a moan of agony. Beads of perspiration were on the greying face. The mouth was twisted in pain. But the glazing eyes still smiled ironically.

"And... so... the astronomer dies," he muttered. "A blundering fool has decreed it. I take my secret with... me. My formulae... the mathematics proving the existence... supermen... I have burned. Spills for my pipe!" A last cackle. "Doesn't that amuse you... young friend? While... I talked... greatest scientific discovery... age... smouldering before...  your eyes.

"What... what is my creed?" A final flicker of intelligence burned in those eyes. "Eddington says... whole universe... steadily and irrevocably running down like... a clock. Jeans says... inevitable end is annihilation... annihilation of life of consciousness... memory... even the elements of matter itself.

"I don't believe... it." He raised his tall figure in the final agony. "It's... it's bad science. What is it Shakespeare said... greatest of all man minds?... and our... little lives shall be rounded with a sleep.' That's it... sleep."

He slumped back in his seat. He was dead. And to the horrified gaze of Peter Allister that deadly silver pallor spread over the face that still stared, open eyed at him.

The door was suddenly swung open. Peter turned. Detective Inspector Graves was there, a document in his hand. His bowler hat was fixed firmly on his head. He stopped as he saw that dead figure sprawled before him. Then he turned to Allister.

"Yes," nodded Peter. "You're too late. Graves. He's dead, Poisoned himself with silver nitrate."

With sudden petulance, the Scotland Yard man tore the warrant for the arrest of Professor Edward Carr into pieces.

"A monster!" he growled. "And to cheat me in the end."

"A great man," said Peter, gazing down at the slumped figure. "A great man." he repeated, "but with a twisted brain..."

TWO HOURS LATER, a Rolls Royce car, shining and expensive, purred along the High and headed for the road that led to Wales. A strange, incongruous figure swathed in many ragged overcoats sat at the wheel, a wide grin on his face. It was Alf Merryweather appointed an hour ago chauffeur to Peter Allister with a town house in Mayfair.

Lolling in the back of the expensive car was the fortunate owner. He was clad in a grey jersey, was without a hat, and his shoes stretched before him were broken and grimed with dust. Alongside Peter Allister sat a bowler-hatted man from Scotland Yard. Graves had heard of the last moon murder, and accepted a lift in the Rolls Royce to the scene of the crime.

"So you realised it was Carr when the masked priest bent over you to kill you in the house in Half Moon Street?" he said.

Peter nodded.

"Why wouldn't you tell me of your suspicions ?" encouraged Graves.

He was still feeing bitter about the suicide of the man who. would have appeared in the dock at the Old Bailey as the criminal of the century.

"Because I had no proof, beyond my own ears," replied Peter simply. "And I guessed that you suspected the man yourself."

"I did," admitted Graves. "But there were several gaps in my chain of evidence. The Jena affair, for example. I only discovered late yesterday that although Carr was in London when that infernal bomb exploded, he had inspired the whole plot. It was the one occasion where he did not commit murder himself. He hired three men to do it for him. They were among that crowd we discovered in Half Moon Street the other evening."

"I think I can guess who the men were," murmured Peter.

"I came to Oxford, still only half convinced of the truth. And for one moment, when that shot was fired in the Minerva Hall I thought I had mistaken my man."

"Yes, it was clever of Carr to think of that," agreed Peter.

"But it didn't deceive me for very long," declared the Scotland Yard man. "When I came to examine the bullet hole in the wall, I discovered a few powder marks. I wired for a ballistics expert to come down from the Yard. He confirmed my suspicions, that Carr had produced the revolver himself and fired."

"Even so, there's one thing I can never forgive you for," said Peter, slowly.

"What is that?"

"Missing that action of the professor when he climbed out of the window of his laboratory, escaped across the quadrangle, took out his car and raced away to murder my best friend— John Bretherton."

The Scotland Yard man shrugged his shoulders. He was more than sore about it, himself.

"The lights were burning all night in his laboratory," he protested. "And from that damned cold street where I stood for hours, three men might have escaped from the room."

Peter pressed his hand.

"Anyhow, I have Jill," he murmured. And he leaned forward eagerly as the car speeded triumphantly towards Snowdon.

Alf Merryweather was singing old war songs, softly to himself as his foot went down on the accelerator. He, at least, was sublimely happy.

The End

Source:

Northern Star (Lismore, NSW, Daily, 25 July 1937 to 1 Sept 1937)

Also published as a serial in:

Goulburn Evening Penny Post (NSW)

The Age (Melbourne)

Advocate (Burnie, Tas)

Leader (Orange, NSW)

Table of Contents

- 1. Full Moon
- 2: Space Time
- 3: The Moon Fades
- 4: Eclipse
- 5: The Great Equatoria
- 6: The Moon Goddess
- 7: Cosmic Power
- 8 : Death In The Moon
- 9:  Journeys End In...