"There was--something else."

Lady Lashmore's voice had become a tremulous whisper.

"Tell me; don't be afraid."

She looked up; her magnificent eyes were wild with horror.

"I believe you know!" she breathed. "Do you?"

Dr. Cairn nodded.

"And on the second occasion," he said, "you awoke earlier?"

Lady Lashmore slightly moved her head.

"The dream was identical?"

"Yes."

"Excepting these two occasions, you never dreamt it before?"

"I dreamt _part_ of it on several other occasions; or only remembered
part of it on waking."

"Which part?"

"The first; that awful cavern--"

"And now, Lady Lashmore--you have recently been present at a
spiritualistic _seance_."

She was past wondering at his power of inductive reasoning, and merely
nodded.

"I suggest--I do not know--that the _seance_ was held under the
auspices of Mr. Antony Ferrara, ostensibly for amusement."

Another affirmative nod answered him.

"You proved to be mediumistic?"

It was admitted.

"And now, Lady Lashmore"--Dr. Cairn's face was very stern--"I will
trouble you no further."

He prepared to depart; when--

"Dr. Cairn!" whispered Lady Lashmore, tremulously, "some dreadful
thing, something that I cannot comprehend but that I fear and loathe
with all my soul, has come to me. Oh--for pity's sake, give me a word
of hope! Save for you, I am alone with a horror I cannot name. Tell
me--"

At the door, he turned.

"Be brave," he said--and went out.

Lady Lashmore sat still as one who had looked upon Gorgon, her
beautiful eyes yet widely opened and her face pale as death; for he
had not even told her to hope.

* * * * *

Robert Cairn was sitting smoking in the library, a bunch of notes
before him, when Dr. Cairn returned to Half-Moon Street. His face,
habitually fresh coloured, was so pale that his son leapt up in alarm.
But Dr. Cairn waved him away with a characteristic gesture of the
hand.

"Sit down, Rob," he said, quietly; "I shall be all right in a moment.
But I have just left a woman--a young woman and a beautiful
woman--whom a fiend of hell has condemned to that which my mind
refuses to contemplate."

Robert Cairn sat down again, watching his father.

"Make out a report of the following facts," continued the latter,
beginning to pace up and down the room.

He recounted all that he had learnt of the history of the house of
Dhoon and all that he had learnt of recent happenings from Lo