“It is impossible,” Hamar said.  “Now I’ll tell you what it is, Matt, I anticipated this the moment I saw you two together, and its got to stop.  You would genuinely fall in love with that girl—­or as a matter of fact any other pretty girl—­if you saw much of her—­and love, I tell you, would be absolutely disastrous to our interests.  You must let her alone—­absolutely alone, I tell you.  I have given her strict orders she is to confine herself to her work, and to me.”

“I think you take a great deal too much on yourself.  I shall see just as much of Miss Rosenberg, when she is disengaged, as I please.”

“Then she never shall be disengaged.  But come, do be sane and put some restraint on this mad infatuation of yours for pretty faces.  Can’t you keep it in check anyhow for two years—­till after the term of the compact has expired!  Then you will be free to indulge in it, to your heart’s content.  For Heaven’s sake, be guided by me.  Harmony between us must be kept at all costs.  Don’t you understand?”

“Oh, yes!  I understand all right,” Kelson said, “and I’ll try.  But it’s very hard—­and I really don’t see there would be any danger in my taking her out occasionally.”

“Well, I do,” Hamar replied, “and there’s an end.  To turn to something that may spell business.  Just before I got up this morning I saw a striped figure bending over me!”

“A striped figure?”

“Yes!  A cylindrical figure, about seven feet high, without any visible limbs; but which gave me the impression it had limbs—­of a sort—­if it cared to show them.”

“You were frightened?”

“Naturally!  So would you have been.  It didn’t speak, but in some indefinable manner it conveyed to me the purport of its visit.  To-night, at twelve o’clock, we are to go to the house of a Hindu, called Karaver, in Berners Street, where we shall be initiated into the second stage of our compact.”

“I hope to goodness we shan’t see any spectral trees or striped figures—­I’ve had enough of them,” Kelson said.

“Then take care you don’t do anything that might lead to the breaking of the compact,” Hamar retorted, “otherwise you’ll see something far worse.”

Shortly before midnight, Hamar, Curtis and Kelson, obeying the injunctions Hamar had received, set off to Berners Street, where they had little difficulty in finding Karaver’s house.

To their astonishment Karaver was expecting them.

“How did you know we were coming,” Curtis asked.

“A gentleman called here early this morning and told me,” Karaver explained.  “He said three friends of his particularly wished to be on the Astral Plane, at twelve o’clock this evening, and that they would each pay me a hundred guineas, if I would show them how to get there.  I demurred.  The secrets that have come down to me through generations of my Cashmere ancestors, I tell only to a chosen few—­those born under the sign of Dejellum Brava.