a power for evil more terrible
than a pestilence, menacing all humanity.

"'Once in many cycles it happens,' she said, 'that a _kulos_-soul pushes
itself within the body of a new-born child, when the pure soul waiting
to enter is delayed. Then the two live together through that life, and
this hideous principle of evil has a chance upon the earth. It is my
will, as I feel it my duty, to see this poor man again. The chances are
that he will never know us, for the shock of this night to his normal
soul is so great as to wipe out memory.'

"The next evening, about the same hour, my sister insisted that I should
go with her to the _Folies Bergere_, a concert garden, none too well
frequented, and when I remonstrated, she said: 'I must go,--It is
there,' and the words sent a shiver through me.

"We drove to this place, and passing into the garden, presently
discovered Richard Burwell seated at a little table, enjoying the scene
of pleasure, which was plainly new to him. My sister hesitated a moment
what to do, and then, leaving my arm, she advanced to the table and
dropped before Burwell's eyes the card she had prepared. A moment later,
with a look of pity on her beautiful face, she rejoined me and we went
away. It was plain he did not know us."

To so much of the savant's strange recital I had listened with absorbed
interest, though without a word, but now I burst in with questions.

"What was your sister's idea in giving Burwell the card?" I asked.

"It was in the hope that she might make the man understand his terrible
condition, that is, teach the pure soul to know its loathsome
companion."

"And did her effort succeed?"

"Alas! it did not; my sister's purpose was defeated by the man's
inability to see the pictures that were plain to every other eye. It is
impossible for the _kulos_-man to know his own degradation."

"And yet this man has for years been leading a most exemplary life?"

My visitor shook his head. "I grant you there has been improvement, due
largely to experiments I have conducted upon him according to my
sister's wishes. But the fiend soul was never driven out. It grieves me
to tell you, doctor, that not only was this man the Water Street
assassin, but he was the mysterious murderer, the long-sought-for
mutilator of women, whose red crimes have baffled the police of Europe
and America for the past ten years."

"You know this," said I, starting up, "and yet did not denounce him?"

"It would ha