-with your infernal
experiments."

"I did not know. How could I tell that it would be frightened? It is mad
with terror. It was his fault. He struck it."

Harvey Deacon sprang up. "Good heavens!" he cried.

A terrible scream sounded through the house.

"It's my wife! Here, I'm going out. If it's the Evil One himself I am
going out!"

He had thrown open the door and rushed out into the passage. At the end
of it, at the foot of the stairs, Mrs. Deacon was lying senseless,
struck down by the sight which she had seen. But there was nothing else.

With eyes of horror we looked about us, but all was perfectly quiet and
still. I approached the black square of the studio door, expecting with
every slow step that some atrocious shape would hurl itself out of it.
But nothing came, and all was silent inside the room. Peeping and
peering, our hearts in our mouths, we came to the very threshold, and
stared into the darkness. There was still no sound, but in one direction
there was also no darkness. A luminous, glowing cloud, with an
incandescent centre, hovered in the corner of the room. Slowly it dimmed
and faded, growing thinner and fainter, until at last the same dense,
velvety blackness filled the whole studio. And with the last flickering
gleam of that baleful light the Frenchman broke into a shout of joy.

"What a fun!" he cried. "No one is hurt, and only the door broken, and
the ladies frightened. But, my friends, we have done what has never been
done before."

"And as far as I can help," said Harvey Deacon, "it will certainly never
be done again."

And that was what befell on the 14th of April last at No. 17 Badderly
Gardens. I began by saying that it would seem too grotesque to dogmatise
as to what it was which actually did occur; but I give my impressions,
_our_ impressions (since they are corroborated by Harvey Deacon and John
Moir), for what they are worth. You may, if it pleases you, imagine
that we were the victims of an elaborate and extraordinary hoax. Or you
may think with us that we underwent a very real and a very terrible
experience. Or perhaps you may know more than we do of such occult
matters, and can inform us of some similar occurrence. In this latter
case a letter to William Markham, 146M, the Albany, would help to throw
a light upon that which is very dark to us.

VII

THE RING OF THOTH

Mr. John Vansittart Smith, F.R.S., of 147-A Gower Street, was a man
whose energy of purpose and