om like Trafalgar Square! That window yonder was
such a long way off I could scarcely see it, but I could just detect a
Chinaman--the owner of the evil yellow face--creeping through it. He
was followed by another, who was enormously tall--so tall that, as they
came towards me (and it seemed to take them something like half-an-hour
to cross this incredible apartment in my dream), the second Chinaman
seemed to tower over me like a cypress-tree.

"I looked up to his face--his wicked, hairless face. Mr. Smith,
whatever age I live to, I'll never forget that face I saw last
night--or did I see it? God knows! The pointed chin, the great dome
of a forehead, and the eyes--heavens above, the huge green eyes!"

He shook like a sick man, and I glanced at Smith significantly.
Inspector Weymouth was stroking his mustache, and his mingled
expression of incredulity and curiosity was singular to behold.

"The pumping of my blood," continued West, "seemed to be bursting my
body; the room kept expanding and contracting. One time the ceiling
would be pressing down on my head, and the Chinamen--sometimes I
thought there were two of them, sometimes twenty--became dwarfs; the
next instant it shot up like the roof of a cathedral.

"'Can I be awake,' I whispered, 'or am I dreaming?'

"My whisper went sweeping in windy echoes about the walls, and was lost
in the shadowy distances up under the invisible roof.

"'You are dreaming--yes.' It was the Chinaman with the green eyes who
was addressing me, and the words that he uttered appeared to occupy an
immeasurable time in the utterance. 'But at will I can render the
subjective objective.' I don't think I can have dreamed those singular
words, gentlemen.

"And then he fixed the green eyes upon me--the blazing green eyes. I
made no attempt to move. They seemed to be draining me of something
vital--bleeding me of every drop of mental power. The whole nightmare
room grew green, and I felt that I was being absorbed into its
greenness.

"I can see what you think. And even in my delirium--if it was
delirium--I thought the same. Now comes the climax of my
experience--my vision--I don't know what to call it. I SAW some WORDS
issuing from my own mouth!"

Inspector Weymouth coughed discreetly. Smith whisked round upon him.

"This will be outside your experience, Inspector, I know," he said,
"but Mr. Norris West's statement does not surprise me in the least. I
know to what the experi