To bring about plagues of insects Hamar had resorted to a very simple method.  He had first of all made a wax image representing a cockroach—­scorpion—­centipede, or whatever other species came into his mind.  Then, placing the image he had made in front of him, and repeating the prayer he had learned from the Unknown, through the medium of Mrs. Anderson-Waite’s table, he had concentrated body, soul, and spirit on plaguing Gladys with the insect, which the image represented.  When his concentration reached the highest degree, insects in their actual physical bodies were transported from the tropics;[23] but when he was unable to concentrate to the utmost, only the ethereal projections of the insects were obtainable; hence the hybrid—­partly scorpion and partly beetle, that appeared and disappeared in Gladys’s bed and bedroom.

To produce the rappings on the walls of Gladys’s room, he had made a wax representation of a wall, and whilst concentrating to the very utmost, had struck it with his knuckles.

The plaguing of the servants Hamar had also accomplished by means of images and concentration.

But in order to bewitch milk, he had been obliged to resort to other means.  He had converted the mumia of an idiot into a magnes microcosmi; and bribing the man who delivered the milk, he gave him instructions to soak the magnes microcosmi, for a few minutes, in every portion that he left at the Cottage.[24]

At length Hamar having failed to gain his object by plaguing Gladys and the servants, set about tormenting John Martin.  He made a wax image of the latter, and after pronouncing the necessary prayer, stuck the image full of pins, crying out as he did so “John Martin, I hate you.  John Martin, I curse you.  John Martin, a plague on you.”  And each time Hamar stuck a pin in the image he had made of John Martin, the real John Martin felt an acute pain in the region of his body corresponding to that in which the pin was stuck.

The doctor, who was called in, could make nothing of the malady, but, following the etiquette of the profession, cloaked his ignorance with a look of profound wisdom, and the pronouncement that he would tell them, in a day or two, what was the matter.  In the meanwhile, he found it necessary and politic to prescribe a non-committal mixture of chalk and rhubarb, which, although disguised under the usual fanciful pharmacopoeia appellation, did not, however, allay the pain.  Sharp, agonizing pricks, now on the neck now in the chest, now in the most sensitive part of the knee-cap, now under the toe-nail, now—­most painful of all—­under the finger-nail—­continued to torment John Martin, who, though as a rule fairly stoical, could not stand these attacks with any degree of composure.  He screamed, and swore, and cursed, until the whole household was terrified—­and Gladys, pretty nearly out of her mind.

During a lull—­an interval, wherein John Martin enjoyed a brief respite, the telephone bell rang.