City of the Beast

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THE Matter Transmitter is both villain and hero of this story (began Kane), for it took me to a world where I felt more at home than I shall ever feel here. It brought me to a wonderful girl whom I loved and who loved me-and then took it all away again.

But I had better begin nearer the beginning.

I was born, as I told you, in Ohio-in Wynnsville-a small, pleasant town that never changed much. Its only unusual feature was in the person of M. Clarchet, a Frenchman who had settled there shortly after the First World War. He lived in a large place on the outskirts of town. M. Clarchet was a cosmopolitan, a Frenchman of the old school-short, very straight-backed, with a typically French, waxed moustache and a rather military way of walking.

To be honest, M. Clarchet was something of a caricature to us and seemed to illustrate everything we had learned about the French in our dime novels and comic books. Yet I owe my life to M.

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