"THE BRIARS, ROTHERFIELD."

"It's a fine, steemulating letter," said McArdle thoughtfully,
fitting a cigarette into the long glass tube which he used as a
holder.  "What's your opeenion of it, Mr. Malone?"

I had to confess my total and humiliating ignorance of the
subject at issue.  What, for example, were Fraunhofer's lines?
McArdle had just been studying the matter with the aid of our
tame scientist at the office, and he picked from his desk two of
those many-coloured spectral bands which bear a general
resemblance to the hat-ribbons of some young and ambitious
cricket club.  He pointed out to me that there were certain black
lines which formed crossbars upon the series of brilliant colours
extending from the red at one end through gradations of orange,
yellow, green, blue, and indigo to the violet at the other.

"Those dark bands are Fraunhofer's lines," said he.  "The colours
are just light itself.  Every light, if you can split it up with
a prism, gives the same colours.  They tell us nothing.  It is the
lines that count, because they vary according to what it may be
that produces the light.  It is these lines that have been
blurred instead of clear this last week, and all the astronomers
have been quarreling over the reason.  Here's a photograph of the
blurred lines for our issue to-morrow.  The public have taken no
interest in the matter up to now, but this letter of
Challenger's in the _Times_ will make them wake up, I'm thinking."

"And this about Sumatra?"
"Well, it's a long cry from a blurred line in a spectrum to a
sick nigger in Sumatra.  And yet the chiel has shown us once
before that he knows what he's talking about.  There is some
queer illness down yonder, that's beyond all doubt, and to-day
there's a cable just come in from Singapore that the lighthouses
are out of action in the Straits of Sundan, and two ships on the
beach in consequence.  Anyhow, it's good enough for you to
interview Challenger upon.  If you get anything definite, let us
have a column by Monday."

I was coming out from the news editor's room, turning over my
new mission in my mind, when I heard my name called from the
waiting-room below.  It was a telegraph-boy with a wire which had
been forwarded from my lodgings at Streatham.  The message was
from the very man we had been discussing, and ran thus:--

Malone, 17, Hill Street, Streatham.--Bring oxygen.--Challenger.

"Bring oxygen!"  The Professor, as I remembered him, had an
elephantine sense of humour capable of the most clumsy and
unwieldly gambollings.  Was this one of those jokes which used to
reduce him to uproarious laughter, when his eyes would disappear
and he was all gaping mouth and wagging beard, supremely
indifferent to the gravity of all around him?  I turned the words
over, but could make nothing even remotely jocose out of them.
Then surely it was a concise order--though a very strange one.
He was the last man in the world whose deliberate command I
should care to disobey.  Possibly some chemical experiment was
afoot; possibly----Well, it was no business of mine to speculate
upon why he wanted it.  I must get it.  There was nearly an hour
before I should catch the train at Victoria.  I took a taxi, and
having ascertained the address from the telephone book, I made
for the Oxygen Tube Supply Company in Oxford Street.

As I alighted on the pavement at my destination, two youths
emerged from the door of the establishment carrying an iron
cylinder, which, with some trouble, they hoisted into a waiting
motor-car.  An elderly man was at their heels scolding and
directing in a creaky, sardonic voice.  He turned towards me.
There was no mistaking those austere features and that goatee
beard.  It was my old cross-grained companion, Professor Summerlee.

"What!" he cried.  "Don't tell me that _you_ have had one of these
preposterous telegrams for oxygen?"

I exhibited it.

"Well, well!  I have had one too, and, as you see, very much
against the grain, I have acted upon it.  Our good friend is as
impossible as ever.  The need for oxygen could not have been so
urgent that he must desert the usual means of supply and
encroach upon the time of those who are really busier than
himself.  Why could he not order it direct?"

I could only suggest that he probably wanted it at once.

"Or thought he did, which is quite another matter.  But it is
superfluous now for you to purchase any, since I have this
considerable supply."

"Still, for some reason he seems to wish that I should bring
oxygen too.  It will be safer to do exactly what he tells me."

Accordingly, in spite of many grumbles and remonstrances from
Summerlee, I ordered an additional tube, which was placed with
the other in his motor-car, for he had offered me a lift to
Victoria.

I turned away to pay off my taxi, the driver of which was very
cantankerous and abusive over his fare.  As I came back to
Professor Summerlee, he was having a furious altercation with