Then round this centre there coiled a dark, smoky
substance, thickening, hardening, growing denser and blacker. And then
the light went out, smothered in that which had grown round it. “It has gone.”

“Hush—there’s something in the room.”

We heard it in the corner where the light had been, something which
breathed deeply and fidgeted in the darkness. “What is it? Le Duc, what have you done?”

“It is all right. No harm will come.” The Frenchman’s voice was treble
with agitation. “Good heavens, Moir, there’s a large animal in the room. Here it is,
close by my chair! Go away! Go away!”

It was Harvey Deacon’s voice, and then came the sound of a blow upon
some hard object. And then ... And then ... how can I tell you what
happened then? Some huge thing hurtled against us in the darkness, rearing, stamping,
smashing, springing, snorting. The table was splintered. We were
scattered in every direction. It clattered and scrambled amongst us,
rushing with horrible energy from one corner of the room to another. We
were all screaming with fear, grovelling upon our hands and knees to get
away from it. Something trod upon my left hand, and I felt the bones
splinter under the weight. “A light! A light!” someone yelled. “Moir, you have matches, matches!”

“No, I have none. Deacon, where are the matches? For God’s sake, the
matches!”

“I can’t find them. Here, you Frenchman, stop it!”

“It is beyond me. Oh, _mon Dieu_, I cannot stop it. The door! Where is
the door?”

My hand, by good luck, lit upon the handle as I groped about in the
darkness. The hard-breathing, snorting, rushing creature tore past me
and butted with a fearful crash against the oaken partition. The instant
that it had passed I turned the handle, and next moment we were all
outside and the door shut behind us. From within came a horrible
crashing and rending and stamping. “What is it? In Heaven’s name, what is it?”

“A horse. I saw it when the door opened. But Mrs. Delamere——?”

“We must fetch her out. Come on, Markham; the longer we wait the less we
shall like it.”

He flung open the door and we rushed in. She was there on the ground
amidst the splinters of her chair. We seized her and dragged her swiftly
out, and as we gained the door I looked over my shoulder into the
darkness. There were two strange eyes glowing at us, a rattle of hoofs,
and I had just time to slam the door when there came a crash upon it
which split it from top to bottom. “It’s coming through! It’s coming!”

“Run, run for your lives!” cried the Frenchman. Another crash, and something shot through the riven door. It was a long
white spike, gleaming in the lamplight. For a moment it shone before us,
and then with a snap it disappeared again. “Quick! Quick! This way!” Harvey Deacon shouted. “Carry her in! Here! Quick!”

We had taken refuge in the dining-room, and shut the heavy oak door. We
laid the senseless woman upon the sofa, and as we did so, Moir, the hard
man of business, drooped and fainted across the hearthrug. Harvey Deacon
was as white as a corpse, jerking and twitching like an epileptic. With
a crash we heard the studio door fly to pieces, and the snorting and
stamping were in the passage, up and down, up and down, shaking the
house with their fury. The Frenchman had sunk his face on his hands, and
sobbed like a frightened child. “What shall we do?” I shook him roughly by the shoulder. “Is a gun any
use?”

“No, no. The power will pass. Then it will end.”

“You might have killed us all—you unspeakable fool—with your infernal
experiments.”

“I did not know. How could I tell that it would be frightened? It is mad
with terror. It was his fault. He struck it.”

Harvey Deacon sprang up. “Good heavens!” he cried. A terrible scream sounded through the house. “It’s my wife! Here, I’m going out. If it’s the Evil One himself I am
going out!”

He had thrown open the door and rushed out into the passage. At the end
of it, at the foot of the stairs, Mrs. Deacon was lying senseless,
struck down by the sight which she had seen. But there was nothing else. With eyes of horror we looked about us, but all was perfectly quiet and
still. I approached the black square of the studio door, expecting with
every slow step that some atrocious shape would hurl itself out of it. But nothing came, and all was silent inside the room. Peeping and
peering, our hearts in our mouths, we came to the very threshold, and
stared into the darkness. There was still no sound, but in one direction
there was also no darkness. A luminous, glowing cloud, with an
incandescent centre, hovered in the corner of the room. Slowly it dimmed
and faded, growing thinner and fainter, until at last the same dense,
velvety blackness filled the whole studio. And with the last flickering
gleam of that baleful light the Frenchman broke into a shout of joy. “What a fun!” he cried. “No one is hurt, and only the door broken, and
the ladies frightened. But, my friends, we have done what has never been
done before.”

“And as far as I can help it,” said Harvey Deacon, “it will certainly
never be done again.”

And that was what befell on the 14th of April last at No. 17, Badderly
Gardens. I began by saying that it would seem too grotesque to dogmatize
as to what it was which actually did occur; but I give my impressions,
_our_ impressions (since they are corroborated by Harvey Deacon and John
Moir), for what they are worth. You may, if it pleases you, imagine that
we were the victims of an elaborate and extraordinary hoax. Or you may
think with us that we underwent a very real and a very terrible
experience. Or perhaps you may know more than we do of such occult
matters, and can inform us of some similar occurrence. In this latter
case a letter to William Markham, 146M, The Albany, would help to throw
a light upon that which is very dark to us. THE JEW’S BREASTPLATE


My particular friend Ward Mortimer was one of the best men of his day at
everything connected with Oriental archæology. He had written largely
upon the subject, he had lived two years in a tomb at Thebes, while he
excavated in the Valley of the Kings, and finally he had created a
considerable sensation by his exhumation of the alleged mummy of
Cleopatra in the inner room of the Temple of Horus, at Philæ. With such
a record at the age of thirty-one, it was felt that a considerable
career lay before him, and no one was surprised when he was elected to
the curatorship of the Belmore Street Museum, which carries with it the
lectureship at the Oriental College, and an income which has sunk with
the fall in land, but which still remains at that ideal sum which is
large enough to encourage an investigator, but not so large as to
enervate him. There was only one reason which made Ward Mortimer’s position a little
difficult at the Belmore Street Museum, and that was the extreme
eminence of the man whom he had to succeed. Professor Andreas was a
profound scholar and a man of European reputation.