The aged scientist's lips quivered with passion and despair.
"Why do you stay?" he cried. "You have won. Why do you mock us? Go away! Let us alone!"
"Oh, no." The other shook his head. "I don't want to leave just yet, professor. There are still some things I have to tell you. Things I learned while making preparations for Elaine's little trip."
He paused to gloat.
"How thoroughly have you investigated the case of that first Elaine Duchard, in whose body your daughter now resides, Professor Duchard?" he demanded.
The white-haired savant did not even answer. He leaned weakly against a laboratory bench, a broken man.
"Did you know, for instance," Adrian Vance continued, "that Baron Morriere's men tortured Elaine Duchard before they murdered her?"
"You fiend! Not even a savage would do a thing like that!"
Vance chuckled evilly.
"You exaggerate," he sneered. "Besides, Elaine's sweetheart, here"—he prodded the still-prone Mark with his foot—"no doubt will protect her."