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and Wallace Cunningham, the young understudy who resolved to take a chance.

I myself, however, was on tiptoes. My right hand was in the side pocket of my coat, and I never took my eyes from the characters on the stage. I was not to be caught napping this time.

And it was well that this was so, for, at the beginning of the same scene that had proved so fatal for poor Arnold, I saw Wallace Cunningham suddenly clutch at his throat. His strong hands seemed to be tearing at something that had him in an awful grip, and his eyes seemed to be popping out.

There was a shriek from a nervous woman in the audience, but by this time I was already alongside of Cunningham, and clutching at the same thing that he was clutching at, a little more weakly and feebly, for the strength was going out of him alarmingly and practically instantly.

I clutched a strong, a terribly strong hand and wrist, strong and inflexible as iron, but flesh and blood. The dagger that I had been keeping my hand on in my pocket flashed in the air, and I brought it down with all my force into the invisible hand that was choking the life out of Cunningham. I felt it sink into flesh and blood, and in an instant I found we were tearing at the air, and the hand that had been there had, in some way, dissolved.

Cunningham fell to the floor with a gasping, tearing