III

At a quarter before midnight, clad in a heavy ulster, and with

slippered feet, I crept cautiously from my room and stole down the

passage to the top of the stairs. Outside the doctor’s door I waited

a moment to listen. All was still; the house in utter darkness; no

gleam of light beneath any door; only, down the length of the corridor,

from the direction of the sick-room, came faint sounds of laughter

and incoherent talk that were not things to reassure a mind already

half a-tremble, and I made haste to reach the hall and let myself out

through the front door into the night.

The air was keen and frosty, perfumed with night smells, and

exquisitely fresh; all the million candles of the sky were alight, and

a faint breeze rose and fell with far-away sighings in the tops of the

pine trees. My blood leaped for a moment in the spaciousness of the

night, for the splendid stars brought courage; but the next instant,

as I turned the corner of the house, moving stealthily down the gravel

drive, my spirits sank again ominously. For, yonder, over the funereal

plumes of the Twelve Acre Plantation, I saw the huge and yellow face

of the full moon just rising in the east, staring down like some vast

Being come to watch upon the progress of our doom. Seen through the

distorting vapours of the earth’s atmosphere, her face looked weirdly

unfamiliar, her usual expression of benignant vacancy somehow a-twist.

I slipped along by the shadows of the wall, keeping my eyes upon the

ground.

The laundry-house, as already described, stood detached from the other

offices, with laurel shrubberies crowding thickly behind it, and the

kitchen-garden so close on the other side that the strong smells of

soil and growing things came across almost heavily. The shadows of the

haunted plantation, hugely lengthened by the rising moon behind them,

reached to the very walls and covered the stone tiles of the roof with

a dark pall. So keenly were my senses alert at this moment that I

believe I could fill a chapter with the endless small details of the

impression I received--shadows, odour, shapes, sounds--in the space of

the few seconds I stood and waited before the closed wooden door.

Then I became aware of some one moving towards me through the

moonlight, and the figure of John Silence, without overcoat and

bareheaded, came quickly and without noise to join me. His eyes, I saw

at once, were wonderfully bright, and so marked was the shining pallor

of his face that I could hardly tell when he passed from the moonlight

into the shade.

He passed without a word, beckoning me to follow, and then pushed the

door open, and went in.

The chill air of the place met us like that of an underground vault;

and the brick floor and whitewashed walls, streaked with damp and

smoke, threw back the cold in our faces. Directly opposite gaped the

black throat of the huge open fireplace, the ashes of wood fires

still piled and scattered about the hearth, and on either side of

the projecting chimney-column were the deep recesses holding the big

twin cauldrons for boiling clothes. Upon the lids of these cauldrons

stood the two little oil lamps, shaded red, which gave all the light

there was, and immediately in front of the fireplace there was a small

circular table with three chairs set about it. Overhead, the narrow

slit windows, high up the walls, pointed to a dim network of wooden

rafters half lost among the shadows, and then came the dark vault of

the roof. Cheerless and unalluring, for all the red light, it certainly

was, reminding me of some unused conventicle, bare of pews or pulpit,

ugly and severe, and I was forcibly struck by the contrast between the

normal uses to which the place was ordinarily put, and the strange and

mediæval purpose which had brought us under its roof to-night.

Possibly an involuntary shudder ran over me, for my companion turned

with a confident look to reassure me, and he was so completely master

of himself that I at once absorbed from his abundance, and felt the

chinks of my failing courage beginning to close up. To meet his eye in

the presence of danger was like finding a mental railing that guided

and supported thought along the giddy edges of alarm.

“I am quite ready,” I whispered, turning to listen for approaching

footsteps.

He nodded, still keeping his eyes on mine. Our whispers sounded hollow

as they echoed overhead among the rafters.

“I’m glad you are here,” he said. “Not all would have the courage.

Keep your thoughts controlled, and imagine the protective shell round

you--round your _inner_ being.”

“I’m all right,” I repeated, cursing my chattering teeth.

He took my hand and shook it, and the contact seemed to shake into me

something of his supreme confidence. The eyes and hands of a strong man

can touch the soul. I think he guessed my thought, for a passing smile

flashed about the corners of his mouth.

“You will feel more comfortable,” he said, in a low tone, “when

the chain is complete. The Colonel we can count on, of course.

Remember, though,” he added warningly, “he may perhaps become

controlled--possessed--when the thing comes, because he won’t know how

to resist. And to explain the business to such a man----!” He shrugged

his shoulders expressively. “But it will only be temporary, and I will

see that no harm comes to him.”

He glanced round at the arrangements with approval.

“Red light,” he said, indicating the shaded lamps, “has the lowest rate

of vibration. Materialisations are dissipated by strong light--won’t

form, or hold together--in rapid vibrations.”

I was not sure that I approved altogether of this dim light, for in

complete darkness there is something protective--the knowledge that one

cannot be seen, probably--which a half-light destroys, but I remembered

the warning to keep my thoughts steady, and forbore to give them

expression.

There was a step outside, and the figure of Colonel Wragge stood in the

doorway. Though entering on tiptoe, he made considerable noise and

clatter, for his free movements were impeded by the burden he carried,

and we saw a large yellowish bowl held out at arms’ length from his

body, the mouth covered with a white cloth. His face, I noted, was

rigidly composed. He, too, was master of himself. And, as I thought of

this old soldier moving through the long series of alarms, worn with

watching and wearied with assault, unenlightened yet undismayed, even

down to the dreadful shock of his sister’s terror, and still showing

the dogged pluck that persists in the face of defeat, I understood what

Dr. Silence meant when he described him as a man “to be counted on.”

I think there was nothing beyond this rigidity of his stern features,

and a certain greyness of the complexion, to betray the turmoil of the

emotions that was doubtless going on within; and the quality of these

two men, each in his own way, so keyed me up that, by the time the door

was shut and we had exchanged silent greetings, all the latent courage

I possessed was well to the fore, and I felt as sure of myself as I

knew I ever could feel.

Colonel Wragge set the bowl carefully in the centre of the table.

“Midnight,” he said shortly, glancing at his watch, and we all three

moved to our chairs.

There, in the middle of that cold and silent place, we sat, with

the vile bowl before us, and a thin, hardly perceptible steam

rising through the damp air from the surface of the white cloth and

disappearing upwards the moment it passed beyond the zone of red light

and entered the deep shadows thrown forward by the projecting wall of

chimney.

The doctor had indicated our respective places, and I found myself

seated with my back to the door and opposite the black hearth. The

Colonel was on my left, and Dr. Silence on my right, both half facing

me, the latter more in shadow than the former. We thus divided the

little table into even sections, and sitting back in our chairs we

awaited events in silence.

For something like an hour I do not think there was even the faintest

sound within those four walls and under the canopy of that vaulted

roof. Our slippers made no scratching on the gritty floor, and our

breathing was suppressed almost to nothing; even the rustle of our

clothes as we shifted from time to time upon our seats was inaudible.

Silence smothered us absolutely--the silence of night, of listening,

the silence of a haunted expectancy. The very gurgling of the lamps was

too soft to be heard, and if light itself had sound, I do not think we

should have noticed the silvery tread of the moonlight as it entered

the high narrow windows and threw upon the floor the slender traces of

its pallid footsteps.

Colonel Wragge and the doctor, and myself too for that matter, sat thus

like figures of stone, without speech and without gesture. My eyes

passed in ceaseless journeys from the bowl to their faces, and from

their faces to the bowl. They might have been masks, however, for all

the signs of life they gave; and the light steaming from the horrid

contents beneath the white cloth had long ceased to be visible.

Then presently, as the moon rose higher, the wind rose with it. It

sighed, like the lightest of passing wings, over the roof; it crept

most softly round the walls; it made the brick floor like ice beneath

our feet. With it I saw mentally the desolate moorland flowing like

a sea about the old house, the treeless expanse of lonely hills, the

nearer copses, sombre, and mysterious in the night. _The_ plantation,

too, in particular I saw, and imagined I heard the mournful whisperings

that must now be a-stirring among its tree-tops as the breeze played

down between the twisted stems. In the depth of the room behind us the

shafts of moonlight met and crossed in a growing network.

It was after an hour of this wearing and unbroken attention, and I

should judge about one o’clock in the morning, when the baying of

the dogs in the stable-yard first began, and I saw John Silence move

suddenly in his chair and sit up in an attitude of attention. Every

force in my being instantly leaped into the keenest vigilance. Colonel

Wragge moved too, though slowly, and without raising his eyes from the

table before him.

The doctor stretched his arm out and took the white cloth from the bowl.

It was perhaps imagination that persuaded me the red glare of the lamps

grew fainter and the air over the table before us thickened. I had been

expecting something for so long that the movement of my companions,

and the lifting of the cloth, may easily have caused the momentary

delusion that something hovered in the air before my face, touching

the skin of my cheeks with a silken run. But it was certainly not a

delusion that the Colonel looked up at the same moment and glanced over

his shoulder, as though his eyes followed the movements of something

to and fro about the room, and that he then buttoned his overcoat more

tightly about him and his eyes sought my own face first, and then the

doctor’s. And it was no delusion that his face seemed somehow to have

turned dark, become spread as it were with a shadowy blackness. I saw

his lips tighten and his expression grow hard and stern, and it came to

me then with a rush that, of course, this man had told us but a part of

the experiences he had been through in the house, and that there was

much more he had never been able to bring himself to reveal at all.

I felt sure of it. The way he turned and stared about him betrayed a

familiarity with other things than those he had described to us. It was

not merely a sight of fire he looked for; it was a sight of something

alive, intelligent, something able to evade his searching; it was _a

person_. It was the watch for the ancient Being who sought to obsess

him.

And the way in which Dr. Silence answered his look--though it was only

by a glance of subtlest sympathy--confirmed my impression.

“We may be ready now,” I heard him say in a whisper, and I understood

that his words were intended as a steadying warning, and braced myself

mentally to the utmost of my power.

Yet long before Colonel Wragge had turned to stare about the room, and

long before the doctor had confirmed my impression that things were at

last beginning to stir, I had become aware in most singular fashion

that the place held more than our three selves. With the rising of the

wind this increase to our numbers had first taken place. The baying of

the hounds almost seemed to have signalled it. I cannot say how it may

be possible to realise that an empty place has suddenly become--not

empty, when the new arrival is nothing that appeals to any one of the

senses; for this recognition of an “invisible,” as of the change in the

balance of personal forces in a human group, is indefinable and beyond

proof. Yet it is unmistakable. And I knew perfectly well at what given

moment the atmosphere within these four walls became charged with the

presence of other living beings besides ourselves. And, on reflection,

I am convinced that both my companions knew it too.

“Watch the light,” said the doctor under his breath, and, then I knew

too that it was no fancy of my own that had turned the air darker, and

the way he turned to examine the face of our host sent an electric

thrill of wonder and expectancy shivering along every nerve in my body.

Yet it was no kind of terror that I experienced, but rather a sort of

mental dizziness, and a sensation as of being suspended in some remote

and dreadful altitude where things might happen, indeed were about to

happen, that had never before happened within the ken of man. Horror

may have formed an ingredient, but it was not chiefly horror, and in no

sense ghostly horror.

Uncommon thoughts kept beating on my brain like tiny hammers, soft yet

persistent, seeking admission; their unbidden tide began to wash along

the far fringes of my mind, the currents of unwonted sensations to rise

over the remote frontiers of my consciousness. I was aware of thoughts,

and the fantasies of thoughts, that I never knew before existed.

Portions of my being stirred that had never stirred before, and things

ancient and inexplicable rose to the surface and beckoned me to follow.

I felt as though I were about to fly off, at some immense tangent,

into an outer space hitherto unknown even in dreams. And so singular

was the result produced upon me that I was uncommonly glad to anchor my

mind, as well as my eyes, upon the masterful personality of the doctor

at my side, for there, I realised, I could draw always upon the forces

of sanity and safety.

With a vigorous effort of will I returned to the scene before me, and

tried to focus my attention, with steadier thoughts, upon the table,

and upon the silent figures seated round it. And then I saw that

certain changes had come about in the place where we sat.

The patches of moonlight on the floor, I noted, had become curiously

shaded; the faces of my companions opposite were not so clearly

visible as before; and the forehead and cheeks of Colonel Wragge were

glistening with perspiration. I realised further, that an extraordinary

change had come about in the temperature of the atmosphere. The

increased warmth had a painful effect, not alone on Colonel Wragge, but

upon all of us. It was oppressive and unnatural. We gasped figuratively

as well as actually.

“You are the first to feel it,” said Dr. Silence in low tones, looking

across at him. “You are in more intimate touch, of course----”

The Colonel was trembling, and appeared to be in considerable distress.

His knees shook, so that the shuffling of his slippered feet became

audible. He inclined his head to show that he had heard, but made no

other reply. I think, even then, he was sore put to it to keep himself

in hand. I knew what he was struggling against. As Dr. Silence had

warned me, he was about to be obsessed, and was savagely, though

vainly, resisting.

But, meanwhile, a curious and whirling sense of exhilaration began

to come over me. The increasing heat was delightful, bringing a

sensation of intense activity, of thoughts pouring through the mind

at high speed, of vivid pictures in the brain, of fierce desires and

lightning energies alive in every part of the body. I was conscious of

no physical distress, such as the Colonel felt, but only of a vague

feeling that it might all grow suddenly too intense--that I might be

consumed--that my personality as well as my body, might become resolved

into the flame of pure spirit. I began to live at a speed too intense

to last. It was as if a thousand ecstasies besieged me----

“Steady!” whispered the voice of John Silence in my ear, and I looked

up with a start to see that the Colonel had risen from his chair. The

doctor rose too. I followed suit, and for the first time saw down into

the bowl. To my amazement and horror I saw that the contents were

troubled. The blood was astir with movement.

The rest of the experiment was witnessed by us standing. It came, too,

with a curious suddenness. There was no more dreaming, for me at any

rate.

I shall never forget the figure of Colonel Wragge standing there beside

me, upright and unshaken, squarely planted on his feet, looking about

him, puzzled beyond belief, yet full of a fighting anger. Framed by

the white walls, the red glow of the lamps upon his streaming cheeks,

his eyes glowing against the deathly pallor of his skin, breathing

hard and making convulsive efforts of hands and body to keep himself

under control, his whole being roused to the point of savage fighting,

yet with nothing visible to get at anywhere--he stood there, immovable

against odds. And the strange contrast of the pale skin and the burning

face I had never seen before, or wish to seen again.

But what has left an even sharper impression on my memory was the

blackness that then began crawling over his face, obliterating the

features, concealing their human outline, and hiding him inch by

inch from view. This was my first realisation that the process of

materialisation was at work. His visage became shrouded. I moved from

one side to the other to keep him in view, and it was only then I

understood that, properly speaking, the blackness was not upon the

countenance of Colonel Wragge, but that something had inserted itself

between me and him, thus screening his face with the effect of a dark

veil. Something that apparently rose through the floor was passing

slowly into the air above the table and above the bowl. The blood in

the bowl, moreover, was considerably less than before.

And, with this change in the air before us, there came at the same

time a further change, I thought, in the face of the soldier. One-half

was turned towards the red lamps, while the other caught the pale

illumination of the moonlight falling aslant from the high windows,

so that it was difficult to estimate this change with accuracy of

detail. But it seemed to me that, while the features--eyes, nose,

mouth--remained the same, the life informing them had undergone some

profound transformation. The signature of a new power had crept into

the face and left its traces there--an expression dark, and in some

unexplained way, terrible.

Then suddenly he opened his mouth and spoke, and the sound of this

changed voice, deep and musical though it was, made me cold and set

my heart beating with uncomfortable rapidity. The Being, as he had

dreaded, was already in control of his brain, using his mouth.

“I see a blackness like the blackness of Egypt before my face,” said

the tones of this unknown voice that seemed half his own and half

another’s. “And out of this darkness they come, they come.”

I gave a dreadful start. The doctor turned to look at me for an

instant, and then turned to centre his attention upon the figure of our

host, and I understood in some intuitive fashion that he was there to

watch over the strangest contest man ever saw--to watch over and, if

necessary, to protect.

“He is being controlled--possessed,” he whispered to me through the

shadows. His face wore a wonderful expression, half triumph, half

admiration.

Even as Colonel Wragge spoke, it seemed to me that this visible

darkness began to increase, pouring up thickly out of the ground by

the hearth, rising up in sheets and veils, shrouding our eyes and

faces. It stole up from below--an awful blackness that seemed to drink

in all the radiations of light in the building, leaving nothing but

the ghost of a radiance in their place. Then, out of this rising sea

of shadows, issued a pale and spectral light that gradually spread

itself about us, and from the heart of this light I saw the shapes of

fire crowd and gather. And these were not human shapes, or the shapes

of anything I recognised as alive in the world, but outlines of fire

that traced globes, triangles, crosses, and the luminous bodies of

various geometrical figures. They grew bright, faded, and then grew

bright again with an effect almost of pulsation. They passed swiftly

to and fro through the air, rising and falling, and particularly in

the immediate neighbourhood of the Colonel, often gathering about his

head and shoulders, and even appearing to settle upon him like giant

insects of flame. They were accompanied, moreover, by a faint sound of

hissing--the same sound we had heard that afternoon in the plantation.

“The fire-elementals that precede their master,” the doctor said in an

undertone. “Be ready.”

And while this weird display of the shapes of fire alternately flashed

and faded, and the hissing echoed faintly among the dim rafters

overhead, we heard the awful voice issue at intervals from the lips of

the afflicted soldier. It was a voice of power, splendid in some way I

cannot describe, and with a certain sense of majesty in its cadences,

and, as I listened to it with quickly-beating heart, I could fancy it

was some ancient voice of Time itself, echoing down immense corridors

of stone, from the depths of vast temples, from the very heart of

mountain tombs.

“I have seen my divine Father, Osiris,” thundered the great tones. “I

have scattered the gloom of the night. I have burst through the earth,

and am one with the starry Deities!”

Something grand came into the soldier’s face. He was staring fixedly

before him, as though seeing nothing.

“Watch,” whispered Dr. Silence in my ear, and his whisper seemed to

come from very far away.

Again the mouth opened and the awesome voice issued forth.

“Thoth,” it boomed, “has loosened the bandages of Set which fettered my

mouth. I have taken my place in the great winds of heaven.”

I heard the little wind of night, with its mournful voice of ages,

sighing round the walls and over the roof.

“Listen!” came from the doctor at my side, and the thunder of the voice

continued--

“I have hidden myself with you, O ye stars that never diminish. I

remember my name--in--the--House--of--Fire!”

The voice ceased and the sound died away. Something about the face and

figure of Colonel Wragge relaxed, I thought. The terrible look passed

from his face. The Being that obsessed him was gone.

“The great Ritual,” said Dr. Silence aside to me, very low, “the Book

of the Dead. Now it’s leaving him. Soon the blood will fashion it a

body.”

Colonel Wragge, who had stood absolutely motionless all this time,

suddenly swayed, so that I thought he was going to fall,--and, but for

the quick support of the doctor’s arm, he probably would have fallen,

for he staggered as in the beginning of collapse.

“I am drunk with the wine of Osiris,” he cried,--and it was half with

his own voice this time--“but Horus, the Eternal Watcher, is about my

path--for--safety.” The voice dwindled and failed, dying away into

something almost like a cry of distress.

“Now, watch closely,” said Dr. Silence, speaking loud, “for after the

cry will come the Fire!”

I began to tremble involuntarily; an awful change had come without

warning into the air; my legs grew weak as paper beneath my weight and

I had to support myself by leaning on the table. Colonel Wragge, I

saw, was also leaning forward with a kind of droop. The shapes of fire

had vanished all, but his face was lit by the red lamps and the pale

shifting moonlight rose behind him like mist.

We were both gazing at the bowl, now almost empty; the Colonel stooped

so low I feared every minute he would lose his balance and drop into

it; and the shadow, that had so long been in process of forming, now at

length began to assume material outline in the air before us.

Then John Silence moved forward quickly. He took his place between us

and the shadow. Erect, formidable, absolute master of the situation, I

saw him stand there, his face calm and almost smiling, and fire in his

eyes. His protective influence was astounding and incalculable. Even

the abhorrent dread I felt at the sight of the creature growing into

life and substance before us, lessened in some way so that I was able

to keep my eyes fixed on the air above the bowl without too vivid a

terror.

But as it took shape, rising out of nothing as it were, and growing

momentarily more defined in outline, a period of utter and wonderful

silence settled down upon the building and all it contained. A hush of

ages, like the sudden centre of peace at the heart of the travelling

cyclone, descended through the night, and out of this hush, as out of

the emanations of the steaming blood, issued the form of the ancient

being who had first sent the elemental of fire upon its mission. It

grew and darkened and solidified before our eyes. It rose from just

beyond the table so that the lower portions remained invisible, but I

saw the outline limn itself upon the air, as though slowly revealed by

the rising of a curtain. It apparently had not then quite concentrated

to the normal proportions, but was spread out on all sides into space,

huge, though rapidly condensing, for I saw the colossal shoulders, the

neck, the lower portion of the dark jaws, the terrible mouth, and then

the teeth and lips--and, as the veil seemed to lift further upon the

tremendous face--I saw the nose and cheek bones. In another moment I

should have looked straight into the eyes----

But what Dr. Silence did at that moment was so unexpected, and took me

so by surprise, that I have never yet properly understood its nature,

and he has never yet seen fit to explain in detail to me. He uttered

some sound that had a note of command in it--and, in so doing, stepped

forward and intervened between me and the face. The figure, just

nearing completeness, he therefore hid from my sight--and I have always

thought purposely hid from my sight.

“The fire!” he cried out. “The fire! Beware!”

There was a sudden roar as of flame from the very mouth of the pit,

and for the space of a single second all grew light as day. A blinding

flash passed across my face, and there was heat for an instant that

seemed to shrivel skin, and flesh, and bone. Then came steps, and I

heard Colonel Wragge utter a great cry, wilder than any human cry I

have ever known. The heat sucked all the breath out of my lungs with a

rush, and the blaze of light, as it vanished, swept my vision with it

into enveloping darkness.

When I recovered the use of my senses a few moments later I saw that

Colonel Wragge with a face of death, its whiteness strangely stained,

had moved closer to me. Dr. Silence stood beside him, an expression of

triumph and success in his eyes. The next minute the soldier tried to

clutch me with his hand. Then he reeled, staggered, and, unable to save

himself, fell with a great crash upon the brick floor.

After the sheet of flame, a wind raged round the building as though it

would lift the roof off, but then passed as suddenly as it came. And in

the intense calm that followed I saw that the form had vanished, and

the doctor was stooping over Colonel Wragge upon the floor, trying to

lift him to a sitting position.

“Light,” he said quietly, “more light. Take the shades off.”

Colonel Wragge sat up and the glare of the unshaded lamps fell upon

his face. It was grey and drawn, still running heat, and there was a

look in the eyes and about the corners of the mouth that seemed in this

short space of time to have added years to its age. At the same time,

the expression of effort and anxiety had left it. It showed relief.

“Gone!” he said, looking up at the doctor in a dazed fashion, and

struggling to his feet. “Thank God! it’s gone at last.” He stared

round the laundry as though to find out where he was. “Did it control

me--take possession of me? Did I talk nonsense?” he asked bluntly.

“After the heat came, I remember nothing----”

“You’ll feel yourself again in a few minutes,” the doctor said. To my

infinite horror I saw that he was surreptitiously wiping sundry dark

stains from the face. “Our experiment has been a success and----”

He gave me a swift glance to hide the bowl, standing between me and our

host while I hurriedly stuffed it down under the lid of the nearest

cauldron.

“----and none of us the worse for it,” he finished.

“And fires?” he asked, still dazed, “there’ll be no more fires?”

“It is dissipated--partly, at any rate,” replied Dr. Silence cautiously.

“And the man behind the gun,” he went on, only half realising what he

was saying, I think; “have you discovered _that_?”

“A form materialised,” said the doctor briefly. “I know for certain now

what the directing intelligence was behind it all.”

Colonel Wragge pulled himself together and got upon his feet. The words

conveyed no clear meaning to him yet. But his memory was returning

gradually, and he was trying to piece together the fragments into a

connected whole. He shivered a little, for the place had grown suddenly

chilly. The air was empty again, lifeless.

“You feel all right again now,” Dr. Silence said, in the tone of a man

stating a fact rather than asking a question.

“Thanks to you--both, yes.” He drew a deep breath, and mopped his face,

and even attempted a smile. He made me think of a man coming from the

battlefield with the stains of fighting still upon him, but scornful of

his wounds. Then he turned gravely towards the doctor with a question

in his eyes. Memory had returned and he was himself again.

“Precisely what I expected,” the doctor said calmly; “a fire-elemental

sent upon its mission in the days of Thebes, centuries before Christ,

and to-night, for the first time all these thousands of years, released

from the spell that originally bound it.”

We stared at him in amazement, Colonel Wragge opening his lips for

words that refused to shape themselves.

“And, if we dig,” he continued significantly, pointing to the floor

where the blackness had poured up, “we shall find some underground

connection--a tunnel most likely--leading to the Twelve Acre Wood. It

was made by--your predecessor.”

“A tunnel made by my brother!” gasped the soldier. “Then my sister

should know--she lived here with him----” He stopped suddenly.

John Silence inclined his head slowly. “I think so,” he said quietly.

“Your brother, no doubt, was as much tormented as you have been,”

he continued after a pause in which Colonel Wragge seemed deeply

preoccupied with his thoughts, “and tried to find peace by burying it

in the wood, and surrounding the wood then, like a large magic circle,

with the enchantments of the old formulæ. So the stars the man saw

blazing----”

“But burying _what_?” asked the soldier faintly, stepping backwards

towards the support of the wall.

Dr. Silence regarded us both intently for a moment before he replied.

I think he weighed in his mind whether to tell us now, or when the

investigation was absolutely complete.

“The mummy,” he said softly, after a moment; “the mummy that your

brother took from its resting-place of centuries, and brought

home--here.”

Colonel Wragge dropped down upon the nearest chair, hanging

breathlessly on every word. He was far too amazed for speech.

“The mummy of some important person--a priest most likely--protected

from disturbance and desecration by the ceremonial magic of the time.

For they understood how to attach to the mummy, to lock up with it in

the tomb, an elemental force that would direct itself even after ages

upon any one who dared to molest it. In this case it was an elemental

of fire.”

Dr. Silence crossed the floor and turned out the lamps one by one. He

had nothing more to say for the moment. Following his example, I folded

the table together and took up the chairs, and our host, still dazed

and silent, mechanically obeyed him and moved to the door.

We removed all traces of the experiment, taking the empty bowl back to

the house concealed beneath an ulster.

The air was cool and fragrant as we walked to the house, the stars

beginning to fade overhead and a fresh wind of early morning blowing up

out of the east where the sky was already hinting of the coming day. It

was after five o’clock.

Stealthily we entered the front hall and locked the door, and as we

went on tiptoe upstairs to our rooms, the Colonel, peering at us over

his candle as he nodded good-night, whispered that if we were ready

the digging should be begun that very day.

Then I saw him steal along to his sister’s room and disappear.