t has something important to
communicate with you, and that unless you come here at once, it won't
answer for the consequences."

"All right!" Hamar said. "I'll come. I'll be with you in less than
half an hour."

When Hamar arrived at Queen's Mansions, he found a terrified party of
ladies awaiting him in the entrance to the flat.

"Thank goodness, you've come!" they exclaimed, all together. "We've
been having an awful time. The table has driven us out of the
drawing-room--it is obsessed by a devil."

"Let me have a look at it," Hamar said, "and I'll soon tell you."

The leader of the party, Mrs. Anderson-Waite, very cautiously opened
the drawing-room door, and Hamar peered in. In the centre of the room
was a large, round, ebony table, that commenced to rock, in the most
sinister fashion, the moment Hamar looked at it.

"It evidently wants to speak with me," Hamar said; "you had better
leave me here with it for a few minutes."

"Do take care," Mrs. Anderson-Waite said, as she shut the door. "It
may want to murder you. If it does, ring this bell, and we will all
come to your assistance."

Hamar gave her an assuring smile, but he was by no means as much at
ease as he pretended to be. He stood staring at the table, too
fascinated to take his eyes off it, and too afraid to move.

At length, however, pulling himself together, and convinced the table
was the medium, through which the Unknown wished to give him fresh
instructions, he stealthily approached it. He addressed it, and it
rapped out to him that he must at once obtain pen and ink and take
down what it wished to say.

Obtaining the requisite materials from Mrs. Anderson-Waite, he sat
down and was preparing to write on his knee, when the table told him
to rub its surface briskly with his left hand, to trace on it the
three Atlantean symbols, _i.e._ a club foot, a hand with the fingers
clenched and the long pointed thumb standing upright, and a bat--and
then--to place his paper on it, and transcribe what it had to say.

Hamar obeyed, and after sitting for exactly three minutes with his
pencil between his fingers, he felt a cold, pulpy hand laid over his,
impelling him to write with lightning-like rapidity. The script read
as follows:--

"To Hamar, Curtis and Kelson--to the three of you in common--is given
the knowledge of inflicting all manner of torments and diseases, of
imparting all kinds of injurious properties, and of causing plagues.

"In the first