`Soames!' again I cried. `Can't you'--but the Devil had now
stretched forth his hand across the table. He brought it slowly
down on--the tablecloth. Soames' chair was empty. His
cigarette floated sodden in his wine-glass. There was no other
trace of him.

For a few moments the Devil let his hand rest where it lay,
gazing at me out of the corners of his eyes, vulgarly triumphant.

A shudder shook me. With an effort I controlled myself and
rose from my chair. `Very clever,' I said condescendingly.
`But--"The Time Machine" is a delightful book, don't you
think? So entirely original!'

`You are pleased to sneer,' said the Devil, who had also risen,
`but it is one thing to write about an impossible machine; it is a
quite other thing to be a Supernatural Power.' All the same, I
had scored.

Berthe had come forth at the sound of our rising. I explained to
her that Mr. Soames had been called away, and that both he and
I would be dining here. It was not until I was out in the open air
that I began to feel giddy. I have but the haziest recollection of
what I did, where I wandered, in the glaring sunshine of that
endless afternoon. I remember the sound of carpenters'
hammers all along Piccadilly, and the bare chaotic look of the
half-erected `stands.' Was it in the Green Park, or in
Kensington Gardens, or WHERE was it that I sat on a chair
beneath a tree, trying to read an evening paper? There was a
phrase in the leading article that went on repeating itself in my