ul.

Silently Buddha recrossed the room, slowly wiping one arm across his
mouth after the Hindu gesture of farewell.

For perhaps a full minute after the disappearance of Buddha not a soul
moved. Then quite suddenly Mrs. Rasselyer-Brown, unable to stand the
tension any longer, pressed an electric switch and the whole room was
flooded with light.

There sat the affrighted guests staring at one another with pale faces.

But, to the amazement and horror of all, the little table in the centre
stood empty--not a single gem, not a fraction of the gold that had lain
upon it was left. All had disappeared.

The truth seemed to burst upon everyone at once. There was no doubt of
what had happened.

The gold and the jewels had been deastralized. Under the occult power
of the vision they had been demonetized, engulfed into the astral plane
along with the vanishing Buddha.

Filled with the sense of horror still to come, somebody pulled aside
the little screen. They fully expected to find the lifeless bodies of
Mr. Yahi-Bahi and the faithful Ram Spudd. What they saw before them was
more dreadful still. The outer Oriental garments of the two devotees
lay strewn upon the floor. The long sash of Yahi-Bahi and the thick
turban of Ram Spudd were side by side near them; almost sickening in
its repulsive realism was the thick black head of hair of the junior
devotee, apparently torn from his scalp as if by lightning and bearing
a horrible resemblance to the cast-off wig of an actor.

The truth was too plain.

"They are engulfed!" cried a dozen voices at once.

It was realized in a flash that Yahi-Bahi and Ram Spudd had paid the
penalty of their daring with their lives. Through some fatal neglect,
against which they had fairly warned the participants of the seance,
the two Orientals had been carried bodily in the astral plane.

"How dreadful!" murmured Mr. Snoop. "We must have made some awful
error."

"Are they deastralized?" murmured Mrs. Buncomhearst.

"Not a doubt of it," said Mr. Snoop.

And then another voice in the group was heard to say, "We must hush it
up. We _can't_ have it known!"

On which a chorus of voices joined in, everybody urging that it must be
hushed up.

"Couldn't you try to reastralize them?" said somebody to Mr. Snoop.

"No, no," said Mr. Snoop, still shaking. "Better not try to. We must
hush it up if we can."

And the general assent to this sentiment showed that, after all, the
principles of Bah