t Calcutta. Sir
John Lambert, K.C.S.I.E., the commissioner of police at that place, very
courteously made investigations at my suggestion, first at the coroner's
court, but the records for the year 1880 are not now in existence, and,
secondly, among the oldest police officers, but also without result. I
applied thereupon to Mr Robert William Shekleton, Q.C., J.P., inquiring
whether any relative of his family had died under curious circumstances
at Calcutta about the year 1880. His answer is this:--"I never heard
anything about the death of a George Shekleton in Calcutta. My elder and
younger brother were both living in Calcutta, and if any person of the
same name had been living there I should have heard it from them. My
younger brother Alexander Shekleton died at Madras on his way home with
his wife and children of confluent small-pox; my eldest brother Joseph
is still alive." The presumption, therefore, is that Carbuccia's story
of the strange fatality which occurred in his presence at a Masonic
lodge is without any foundation in fact, but I regard the result as
negative because it falls short of demonstration. I am now setting other
channels in operation, but as it is not a test case, and not an event
which Dr Bataille claims to have witnessed himself, it is unnecessary to
await the issue.

If the reader will now glance at the several sections of the sixth
chapter, he will find that one of the most important is that entitled
"The Seven Temples and a Sabbath in Sheol," where Dr Bataille tells us
that he witnessed unheard of operations in black magic on the part of
Palladian Masons and diabolising fakirs. The locality was a plain called
Dappah, two hours drive from Calcutta. The particulars which are given
concerning the edifices on the mountain of granite, but more especially
concerning an open charnel where the dead bodies of innumerable human
beings, mixed indiscriminately with those of animals and with the town
refuse, are left to rot under the eye of heaven, will not impress any
one, however unacquainted with India, and with the vicinity of the
English capital and seat of government, as wearing many of the features
of probability. The facts are as follows:--A place called Dhappamanpour,
and for brevity Dhappa, does exist in the neighbourhood of Calcutta, and
thereto the town refuse is actually carried by a special line of
railway; there is no granite mountain and there are no temples, while so
far from it being a