Lady De Greene, the well-known humanitarian, who was most indefatigable in getting up petitions to the Home Secretary, whenever the perpetrator of any particularly heinous and inexcusable murder was about to be hanged, and who was universally acknowledged “incapable of harming a fly,” called, surreptitiously, on Hamar.

“I understand,” she said, “everything you do here is in strict confidence!”

“Certainly, madam, certainly!” Hamar said.  “We make it a point of honour to divulge—­nothing!”

“That being so,” Lady De Greene observed, “I want you to tell me of a spell that will hasten some very obnoxious person’s death.”

“If you will give me a rough idea of their personal appearance,” Hamar said, “I will make a wax image of them, and undertake they will trouble you no longer.”

But Lady De Greene shook her head.  She had no desire to commit herself.

“Can’t you do it in any other way,” she said, “can’t you let me give them an unlucky charm—­the sort of thing that might bring about a taxi disaster?”

Hamar thought for a moment and then—­smiled.

“Yes!” he said, “I think I can accommodate you.”

Leaving her for a few minutes, he went to the laboratory, and from a tin box marked homicidal lunatic, he took a plain, gold ring.  With this he returned to Lady De Greene, murmuring on the way the prayer he had learned from the table.

“Here you are,” he said handing the ring to Lady De Greene, “give it to the person you have mentioned to me—­and the result you desire will speedily come to pass.”

Three days later, London was immeasurably shocked.  It read in the papers that the highly accomplished Lady De Greene, beloved and respected by all, for the strenuous exertions on behalf of humanitarianism, had been barbarously murdered by her husband (from whom—­unknown to the public—­she had been living apart for years), who had suddenly, and, for no apparent reason, become insane.  Hamar, who was immensely tickled, alone knew the reason why.

This was no isolated case.  Scores of Society women came to the trio with the same request.  “A spell, or charm, or something, that will bring about a fatal accident—­not a lingering illness”—­and the person for whom the accident was desired, was usually the husband.  And the trio often indulged in grim jokes.

Without a doubt, Lady Minkhurst got her heart’s desire when her husband abruptly cut his throat, but alas, amongst those decimated, when the charm fell into the hands of one of the footmen, was her ladyship’s lover.

Again, Mrs. Jacques, the beauty, who, at one time, wrote for half the fashion papers in England, certainly secured the demise of Colonel Dick Jacques, who tumbled downstairs and broke his neck, but as in his fall the Colonel alighted on one of the maids, who was not insured, and so seriously injured her that she was pronounced a hopeless cripple, Mrs. Jacques—­with whom money was an object—­had, of course, to maintain her for the rest of her life.