Page:Arthur B Reeve - The Dream Doctor.djvu/331

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
The Ghouls
323

Craig shook his head sententiously. Evidently he was not prepared yet to talk.

With another look at the body in the broken casket he remarked: "To-morrow I want to call on Mrs. Phelps and Doctor Forden, and, if it is possible to find him, Dana Phelps. Meanwhile, Andrews, if you and Walter will stand guard here, there is an apparatus which I should like to get from my laboratory and set up here before it is too late."

It was far past the witching hour of midnight, when graveyards proverbially yawn, before Craig returned in the car. Nothing had happened in the meantime except those usual eery noises that one may hear in the country at night anywhere. Our visitor of the early evening seemed to have been scared away for good.

Inside the mausoleum, Kennedy set up a peculiar machine which he attached to the electric-light circuit in the street by a long wire which he ran loosely over the ground. Part of the apparatus consisted of an elongated box lined with lead, to which were several other attachments, the nature of which I did not understand, and a crank-handle.

"What's that?" asked Andrews curiously, as Craig set up a screen between the apparatus and the body.

"This is a calcium-tungsten screen," remarked Kennedy, adjusting now what I know to be a Crookes' tube on the other side of the body itself, so that the order was: the tube, the body, the screen, and the oblong box. Without a further word we continued to watch him.

At last, the apparatus adjusted apparently to his