"Green light!"
Stinchfield turned his switch, and there in the glow of the lamp stood a tall female figure with pale, sweet, oval face and dark, mysterious eyes.
"It is Altair!" exclaimed Leo.
Victor shivered with awe and exalted admiration, for the eyes seemed to look straight at him. The room was filled with that familiar unaccountable odor, and a cold wind blew as before from the celestial visitant, with suggestions of limitless space and cold, white light.
"Be faithful," the sweet Voice said. "Do not grieve. Do your work. Good-by."
The vision lasted but an instant, but in that moment Stinchfield and Bartol both perceived the psychic in her electric prison, lying like a corpse with lolling head and ghostly, sunken cheeks. She seemed to have lost half her bulk; like a partly filled garment she draped her chair.
The engineer spoke in a voice soft, pleading, husky with excitement. "May I flashlight now?"
"Not that—but this!" uttered a man's voice, and forth from the cabinet a faintly luminous mist appeared.
"Red lamp!"
In the glow of the sixteen-candle-power light the face of a bearded man was plainly seen. It wore a look of grave expectancy.