uipped Adept."

_Collectanea Hermetica_. Vol. VIII.]

There was a faint rustling sound in the cellar, which seemed to grow
louder and more insistent, but Dr. Cairn, apparently, did not notice
it, for he turned to his son, and albeit the latter could see him but
vaguely, he knew that his face was grimly set.

"It seems like butchery," he said evenly, "but, in the interests of
the world, we must not hesitate. A shot might attract attention. Give
me your knife."

For a moment, the other scarcely comprehended the full purport of the
words. Mechanically he took out his knife, and opened the big blade.

"Good heavens, sir," he gasped breathlessly, "it is _too_ awful!"

"Awful I grant you," replied Dr. Cairn, "but a duty--a duty, boy, and
one that we must not shirk. I, alone among living men, know whom, and
_what_, lies there, and my conscience directs me in what I do. His end
shall be that which he had planned for you. Give me the knife."

He took the knife from his son's hand. With the light directed upon
the still, ivory face, he stepped towards the sarcophagus. As he did
so, something dropped from the roof, narrowly missed falling upon his
outstretched hand, and with a soft, dull thud dropped upon the mud
brick floor. Impelled by some intuition, he suddenly directed the
light to the roof above.

Then with a shrill cry which he was wholly unable to repress, Robert
Cairn seized his father's arm and began to pull him back towards the
stair.

"Quick, sir!" he screamed shrilly, almost hysterically. "My God! my
God! _be quick_!"

The appearance of the roof above had puzzled him for an instant as the
light touched it, then in the next had filled his very soul with
loathing and horror. For directly above them was moving a black patch,
a foot or so in extent ... and it was composed of a dense moving mass
of tarantula spiders! A line of the disgusting creatures was mounting
the wall and crossing the ceiling, ever swelling the unclean group!

Dr. Cairn did not hesitate to leap for the stair, and as he did so the
spiders began to drop. Indeed, they seemed to leap towards the
intruders, until the floor all about them and the bottom steps of the
stair presented a mass of black, moving insects.

A perfect panic fear seized upon them. At every step spiders
_crunched_ beneath their feet. They seem to come from nowhere, to be
conjured up out of the darkness, until the whole cellar, the stairs,
the very fetid air about them, b