all. We need only you—to help us populate our realm. Where is it? Ah, that I will tell you when you come to our meeting place of those who would perhaps join us. It is not far from here—"
He described a place hardly more than two miles away, where the upper reaches of Washington Heights look down upon Spuyten Duyvil creek and there is still a little open country with patches of woods crowded by the growing city. The time he named was 3 A. M. tonight.
"You will come?" he said. "But let me warn you to say nothing of this." His eyes seemed to gleam with a new intensity. "We have ways of knowing whether or not you play fair—and ways of punishing. And we want only eligibles like you. We choose very carefully."
"All right," I agreed.
"And the young woman—she will get her eyesight. That I promise you. You think I talk wild? You are mistaken." He stood up suddenly, smiled and with a queer, jerky little gesture, saluted us and turned away. My gaze followed him; and again I had that feeling of an indefinable weirdness about him. His walk was measured, as though he were carefully calculating each step.
Doris was gripping me.
"Oh Bob, what did all that mean? He said I could get my sight—"
Poor Doris, clutching at any straw.
"I'll tell Jim about it," I said. Jim Blake is her brother; his desk was in the same newsroom with mine. "We'll go take a look at that meeting, maybe."
I took her home presently,. She and her brother had an apartment here in the neighborhood. He was down at the office now, I knew. I left Doris there alone; went upon my routine job downtown.
IT was nearly two A. M. when I reached my desk. Blake was there. A fellow about my age; red-headed, freckle-faced; blue-eyed, pugnacious. Usually with a grinning, breezy manner. But he wasn't grinning now. Soberly he tossed a sheaf of the latest news-flimsies at me.
"Take a look, Bob. Something damn queer going on tonight. Green thinks it's some kind of a joke the humorous angle for him—"
Young Pete Green, at the desk next to us, let out a guffaw. "Costume Ball Disgorges Peeping Toms—there's my catch-line. Pretty neat? I'll be on the air with that at 8 A.M."
"The eternal comedian," Blake said. "I'll be damned if I see anything funny in it."
I riffled through the flimsies, noting the items he had marked. Occurences all within the last few hours; all in New York City and its suburbs . . ." "Redskin climbs to porch roof. A marauder garbed as an American Indian . . ." And another: "Girl frightens burglar, fantastically dressed as Colonial Soldier. Janet Scudder (19) was seized by a man in the costume of a Colonial Soldier . . ." And another: "Man in weird costume tries to abduct farm girl. Mary Hoskins, eighteen, is in Centerville hospital, recovering from attack by unknown assailiant in fancy dress futuristic costume.
Items of humor? There was nothing funny in them to me. I sat staring, with a vague shudder. An office boy came with another sheaf of flimsies. Blake gasped as he glanced at them. This time, several girls were missing; a girl had been heard screaming. . . A running Indian, two-thirds naked, painted-smeared, had flung a tomahawk at a policeman. With unerring precision, at a distance of a hundred feet, the policeman's skull had been split as though
