Twhich had taken place in the Roderich home tended towards the same end.They had had the same origin.It was Wilhelm Storitz, and he alone, who had been responsible for them.Attribute them to some sleight-of-hand……To this I had to give a negative answer.No, neither the scandal in the Church.nor the theft of the nuptial crown, could be attributed to trickery.

I had then to consider seriously the idea that this German had inherited some scientific secret from his father, that of some unknown discovery which gave him the power of making himself invisible……And, after all, why not……Why should not certain rays of light have the power of passing right through opaque objects, as though those objects were translucent……But my thoughts were leading me astray……All nonsense that, nonsense which I took care not to mention to anybody.

We had taken Myra home without her regaining consciousness.She was carried into her room and placed upon her bed, but the cares lavished upon her were in vain.She was still inert, still unconscious in spite of the Doctor's impotent efforts.Yet she was still breathing, she was still alive.I marvelled that she had been able to survive so many trials, that this last emotion had not killed her.

Many of Dr.Roderich's colleagues had hastened to his aid.They surrounded Myra's bed, on which she lay motionless, her eyelids lowered, her face the colour of wax, her chest lifted only by the irregular beating of her heart, her respiration reduced to a sigh, a sigh which every moment seemed about to die away……

Marc was holding her hands.He was weeping.He appealed to her, he called her:

‘Myra!Dear Myra!'

In a voice choked by sobs, Madame Roderich repeated in vain:‘Myra, my child……I'm here, near you, your mother.'

The girl never opened her eyes, and she certainly had not heard either of them.

But the physicians had tried the most energetic remedies.For a moment it seemed that their patient was about to recover consciousness……Her lips babbled vague words whose meaning it was impossible to distinguish.Her fingers quivered in Marc's hands, her eyes opened slightly.But what a vacant look beneath those half-raised eye-lids!What a glance, devoid of any meaning!

Marc realised this only too well.Suddenly he started back with a cry:

‘Mad!Mad!'

I dashed towards him, wondering if he too were not going to lose his reason.He had to be taken into another room where the doctors struggled with that crisis, a crisis whose outcome seemed likely to be fatal.

What would be the end of this drama?Dare we hope that with time Myra might recover her intelligence, that care would triumph over the loss of her mind, that this would be only a passing madness?

When Captain Haralan was alone with me, he said, ‘We've got to put a stop to this!'

Put a stop to it?What did he mean?That Wilhelm Storitz had returned to Ragz, that he was responsible for this profanation, that we could no longer doubt.But where could we find him, and how could we lay hands on this inap-prehensible creature?

What impression, moreover, would these events make upon the town?Would it accept a natural explanation of them?Here we were not in France, where, undoubtedly, these wonders would have been made the subject of jest and ridiculed in song.Things were very different in this country.

As I have already pointed out, the Magyars have a natural love of the marvellous, and their superstition, among the uneducated classes, is ineradicable.For wellinformed people, these wonders could be the result of some chemical or physical discovery.But when it comes to unenlightened minds, everything is explained by the intervention of the devil, and Wilhelm Storitz would be regarded as the devil in person.

Anyhow, we could no longer dream of being able to hide the conditions in which this foreigner, against whom the Governor of Ragz had signed an order for his expulsion, was involved in this business.What we had kept secret so far could no longer, after the scandal at St.Michael's, remain in the shadows.

From the next day onwards the town was in an uproar.The events at Dr.Roderich's were associated with those in the Cathedral.The calm which had descended upon the public gave place to fresh troubles.In every house, among every family, the name of Wilhelm Storitz could no longer be uttered without its arousing the memory, or one might say the ghost, of that strange person, whose life was spent between the silent walls and behind the closed windows of the house on the Boulevard Tékéli.

Hence it will not be surprising that, as soon as these tidings were known, the whole population of the town rushed towards that Boulevard, urged on by some irresistible force which they themselves could not explain.

It was thus that the crowd had thronged into the cemetery at Spremberg.There, however, the compatriots of the savant had expected to be present at some prodigy, and were not spurred on by any feeling of enmity.Here, on the contrary, there was an explosion of hatred, a lust for vengeance, justified by the deeds of a malefactor.

Nor must there be forgotten the horror which had seized upon this religious-minded town at the scandal which had just taken place at the Cathedral.

This over-excitement could do nothing but grow, and the great majority would never have accepted a natural explanation of these incomprehensible phenomena.

The Governor of Ragz had to consider public opinion in the town, and he instructed the Chief of Police to take all the steps which the situation demanded.He must take precautions against a demonstration of panic which could have the most serious consequences.Scarcely had the name of Wilhelm Storitz been uttered, moreover, when it became necessary to protect the house on the Boulevard Tékéli against entry or plunder.

Meanwhile my ideas were developing, and I was now considering quite seriously a hypothesis which at first I had rejected de plano.If this hypothesis were wellfounded, if a man had the power of making himself invisible, —this was perhaps incredible and would not have seemed more unlikely than that the fable of the ring of Gyges at the court of King Candaule should‘come true'—then public order would be endangered.Personal security would be at an end.

As Wilhelm Storitz had come back to Ragz without anybody's being able to see him, there was nothing to prevent his being there still, without our being able to make certain.Another cause of uneasiness:had he kept to himself the secret of that discovery which, in all probability, his father had bequeathed to him?Could his servant Hermann also make use of it?Could others use it for his benefit or their own?

What would prevent them from entering the houses when and how they liked, and from taking part in the lives of their occupants?Would not the privacy of family life be destroyed?Even in his own home could anyone be certain of being alone, certain of not being overheard, of not being spied on unless he kept in total darkness?And outside in the streets, that perpetual fear of being followed without knowing it by someone invisible, who would never let you out of his sight and could do what he pleased with you……How could anyone protect himself from attacks of all sorts, now made so easy?Would it not lead, before long, to the destruction of social life?

Then it was remembered what had happened in that marketplace, what Captain Haralan and I had witnessed.A man had been violently knocked to the ground, as he claimed, by some invisible aggressor.Everything now went to show that he had spoken the truth.He had undoubtedly been knocked down by somebody, by Wilhelm Storitz or Hermann or somebody else.This was the view to which we were forced;everywhere we went we were liable to such an encounter.

Then other things returned to my memory, the notice torn down from the frame in the Cathedral, and, during our search of the house on the Boulevard Tékéli, that noise of footsteps we had heard in the rooms, that phial which had so inopportunely fallen and broken.

Well, he had been there, himself and in all probability Hermann too.He had never left the town as we had supposed, and that explained the soapy water in the bedroom, the fire in the kitchen stove.Yes, they had both been present at the search made in the yard, in the garden, in the house, and it was in making their escape that they had knocked down the policeman on guard at the foot of the stairs.If we had found the nuptial crown in the belvedere, it was because Wilhelm Storitz, taken by surprise, had not had time to take it away.

And, so far as I was concerned, the incidents which had marked my journey on the Dorothy when I was coming down the Danube were now explained.That passenger whom I supposed to have gone ashore had still been on board without anyone's being able to see him!

So, I told myself, that invisibility, he knew how to produce it instantaneously.He could appear or disappear at will, like a magician with his enchanted wand, and at the same time he could render invisible the clothes which covered him, but not the things he held in his hand, for we had seen the contract and the bouquet torn to pieces, the crown carried off, the wedding-rings hurled across the nave.Yet it was not a question of magic, of cabalistic words, of incantations, of sorcery.Let us keep to the realm of material facts.Wilhelm Storitz clearly had the formula of some chemical which it was enough to drink……Which chemical?The one, no doubt, which had been in that phial and which had evaporated almost instantaneously when it was broken.What was the formula of that chemical, that was what we did not know and what we needed to know, but what perhaps we never should know……

As for the person of Wilhelm Storitz, now that it was invisible, was it impossible to seize it?If it eluded the sense of sight it did not, I imagine elude that of touch.His material frame did not lose either of the three dimensions common to all bodies, length, breadth, depth.He was still there, in flesh and blood, as they say.Invisible, granted, but intangible, no!That was for ghosts and we were not dealing with a ghost!

Should chance allow us to seize him by the arms, by the legs, by the head, then even if we did not see him we should at least still hang on to him.And amazing though his power was, it would not enable him to pass through the walls of a prison.

This was nothing but a chain of reasoning, on the whole acceptable, each link in which seemed probable.But the position nonetheless was still disquieting, and public security was compromised.Henceforth we should live in the midst of alarms.We should never feel safe, neither outdoors, nor inside the houses, neither by day nor by night.The slightest noise in one of the rooms, the creaking of the floor, a blind disturbed by the wind, a creak from the weath-ercock on the roof, the buzzing of an insect in our ears, the whistling of the wind through an ill-fitting door or a window, everything would seem suspicious.During the comings and goings of everyday life, at the table during the meals, in the evenings during the conversation, in the night during sleep—supposing that sleep were possible—we should never know whether some intruder had not crept into the house, whether Wilhelm Storitz or someone else were not there, spying on our actions, listening to our words, at last penetrating into the most intimate of our family secrets.

It was possible, no doubt, that that German had left Ragz and gone back to Spremberg.But when we thought it over—this was the opinion of the Doctor and Captain Haralan, as well as of the Governor and the Chief of Police—could we reasonably suppose that Wilhelm Storitz had finished his deplorable attacks?If he had let the Governor give his formal authorisation for the wedding, it was because he had not yet got back from Spremberg.But as for the actual marriage, he had interrupted its celebration, and should Myra recover her senses, would he not try to prevent it again?Why should the hatred which he had vowed against the Roderich family be quenched, as it was not yet satisfied?The threats which had resounded in the Cathedral, did they not give an eloquent reply to these questions?

No, the last word on this matter had not been spoken, and when we thought of the means which this man had at his disposal for carrying out his schemes for vengeance, we were right to fear everything.

Indeed, even though Dr.Roderich's home were under surveillance night and day, might he not succeed in getting into it?And once inside, could he not do whatever he liked?From this may be judged the state of mind of those who kept within the realm of facts as well as of those who abandoned themselves to the exaggeration of a superstitious imagination.

And, indeed, was there any remedy for this situation?I have to admit that I could not see one.Even the departure of Marc and Myra would change nothing.Would not Wilhelm Storitz be able to follow them freely?Without taking into account that Myra's state of health would hardly allow her to leave Ragz.

And where was he now, our inapprehensible enemy?Nobody would have been able to say for certain had not a series of events shown us, blow upon blow, that he was still staying in the midst of a people whom he could brave and terrorise with impunity.

The evening of that very day, 4th June, a powerful light, visible from some distance away, appeared at the highest window of the belfry.A flaming torch rose and fell and moved from side to side as though some incendiary were trying to set the building on fire.

The Chief of Police and his men, throwing themselves out of their headquarters, quickly mounted to the belfry.The light had already disappeared, and, as M.Stepark had expected anyhow, nobody could be found.On the floor lay the extinguished torch from which rose a resinous smell, but the incendiary had vanished.

Either that person—let us say Wilhelm Storitz—had had time to escape, or else he was hiding, and impossible to find, in some corner of the belfry.

The crowd assembled on the square got no return for their cries of vengeance, which must have aroused the culprit's laughter.

Next day, in the morning, more bravado was hurled at the whole half-maddened city.

Half-past ten had just sounded where there clanged out a sinister peal of bells, a funeral knell, a sort of tocsin of fear.

This time it was not one solitary man who could have brought into action the campanological apparatus of the Cathedral.Wilhelm Storitz must have been aided by several accomplices, or at least by his servant Hermann.

The townspeople crowded on to the St.Michael's Square, hurrying even from distant parts of the city into which the clang of the tocsin had hurled affright.Once again M.Stepark and his men hastened to the scene.They dashed towards the spiral stairs leading to the North Tower and rapidly climbed the steps.They reached the bellchamber, which was flooded by the daylight coming in through the louvres……But in vain they examined that part of the tower and the gallery above……Nobody!Nobody……When the policemen entered the chamber where the mute bells had just stopped swinging, the invisible bellringers had already vanished.