and then felt, as it were, an air pass by him; and, something having touched the hand which held the sword, his arm was immediately benumbed as far as the shoulder.  He supposed that the weapon displeased the spirit, and set it down within the circle.  The human figure at once reappeared, but Eliphas experienced such a sudden exhaustion in all his limbs that he was obliged to sit down.  He fell into a deep coma, and dreamed strange dreams.  But of these, when he recovered, only a vague memory remained to him.  His arm continued for several days to be numb and painful.  The figure had not spoken, but it seemed to Eliphas Levi that the questions were answered in his own mind.  For to each an inner voice replied with one grim word:  dead.’

’Your friend seems to have had as little fear of spooks as you have of lions,’ said Burdon.  ’To my thinking it is plain that all these preparations, and the perfumes, the mirrors, the pentagrams, must have the greatest effect on the imagination.  My only surprise is that your magician saw no more.’

‘Eliphas Levi talked to me himself of this evocation,’ said Dr Porhoet.  ’He told me that its influence on him was very great.  He was no longer the same man, for it seemed to him that something from the world beyond had passed into his soul.’

’I am astonished that you should never have tried such an interesting experiment yourself,’ said Arthur to Oliver Haddo.

‘I have,’ answered the other calmly.  ’My father lost his power of speech shortly before he died, and it was plain that he sought with all his might to tell me something.  A year after his death, I called up his phantom from the grave so that I might learn what I took to be a dying wish.  The circumstances of the apparition are so similar to those I have just told you that it would only bore you if I repeated them.  The only difference was that my father actually spoke.’

‘What did he say?’ asked Susie.

’He said solemnly:  “Buy Ashantis, they are bound to go up.”

’I did as he told me; but my father was always unlucky in speculation, and they went down steadily.  I sold out at considerable loss, and concluded that in the world beyond they are as ignorant of the tendency of the Stock Exchange as we are in this vale of sorrow.’

Susie could not help laughing.  But Arthur shrugged his shoulders impatiently.  It disturbed his practical mind never to be certain if Haddo was serious, or if, as now, he was plainly making game of them.

6

Two days later, Arthur received Frank Hurrell’s answer to his letter.  It was characteristic of Frank that he should take such pains to reply at length to the inquiry, and it was clear that he had lost none of his old interest in odd personalities.  He analysed Oliver Haddo’s character with the patience of a scientific man studying a new species in which he is passionately concerned.

My dear Burdon: