“May I ask, sir, how I come to have the honour of being your host?” asked Faull sullenly.  He thought that the evening was not proceeding as smoothly as he had anticipated.

The newcomer looked at him for a second, and then broke into a great, roaring guffaw.  He thumped Faull on the back playfully—­but the play was rather rough, for the victim was sent staggering against the wall before he could recover his balance.

“Good evening, my host!”

“And good evening to you too, my lad!” he went on, addressing the supernatural youth, who was now beginning to wander about the room, in apparent unconsciousness of his surroundings.  “I have seen someone very like you before, I think.”

There was no response.

The intruder thrust his head almost up to the phantom’s face.  “You have no right here, as you know.”

The shape looked back at him with a smile full of significance, which, however, no one could understand.

“Be careful what you are doing,” said Backhouse quickly.

“What’s the matter, spirit usher?”

“I don’t know who you are, but if you use physical violence toward that, as you seem inclined to do, the consequences may prove very unpleasant.”

“And without pleasure our evening would be spoiled, wouldn’t it, my little mercenary friend?”

Humour vanished from his face, like sunlight from a landscape, leaving it hard and rocky.  Before anyone realised what he was doing, he encircled the soft, white neck of the materialised shape with his hairy hands and, with a double turn, twisted it completely round.  A faint, unearthly shriek sounded, and the body fell in a heap to the floor.  Its face was uppermost.  The guests were unutterably shocked to observe that its expression had changed from the mysterious but fascinating smile to a vulgar, sordid, bestial grin, which cast a cold shadow of moral nastiness into every heart.  The transformation was accompanied by a sickening stench of the graveyard.

The features faded rapidly away, the body lost its consistence, passing from the solid to the shadowy condition, and, before two minutes had elapsed, the spirit-form had entirely disappeared.

The short stranger turned and confronted the party, with a long, loud laugh, like nothing in nature.

The professor talked excitedly to Kent-Smith in low tones.  Faull beckoned Backhouse behind a wing of scenery, and handed him his check without a word.  The medium put it in his pocket, buttoned his coat, and walked out of the room.  Lang followed him, in order to get a drink.

The stranger poked his face up into Maskull’s.

“Well, giant, what do you think of it all?  Wouldn’t you like to see the land where this sort of fruit grows wild?”

“What sort of fruit?”

“That specimen goblin.”

Maskull waved him away with his huge hand.  “Who are you, and how did you come here?”