saw beneath, no more jewels, but a
little old pocket-book, worn and shabby with use. Dyson opened it at
the first leaf, and dropped the book again appalled. He had read the
name of the owner, neatly written in blue ink:--

STEVEN BLACK, M.D.,
Oranmore,
Devon Road,
Harlesden.

It was several minutes before Dyson could bring himself to open the
book a second time; he remembered the wretched exile in his garret and
his strange talk, and the memory too of the face he had seen at the
window, and of what the specialist had said surged up in his mind, and
as he held his finger on the cover he shivered, dreading what might be
written within. When at last he held it in his hand, and turned the
pages, he found that the first two leaves were blank, but the third was
covered with clear minute writing, and Dyson began to read with the
light of the opal flaming in his eyes.

V

"Ever since I was a young man," the record began, "I devoted all my
leisure and a good deal of time that ought to have been given to other
studies to the investigation of curious and obscure branches of
knowledge. What are commonly called the pleasures of life had never any
attractions for me, and I lived alone in London, avoiding my
fellow-students, and in my turn avoided by them as a man self-absorbed
and unsympathetic. So long as I could gratify my desire of knowledge of
a peculiar kind, knowledge of which the very existence is a profound
secret to most men, I was intensely happy, and I have often spent whole
nights sitting in the darkness of my room, and thinking of the strange
world on the brink of which I trod. My professional studies, however,
and the necessity of obtaining a degree, for some time forced my more
obscure employment into the background, and soon after I had qualified
I met Agnes, who became my wife. We took a new house in this remote
suburb, and I began the regular routine of a sober practice, and for
some months lived happily enough, sharing in the life about me, and
only thinking at odd intervals of that occult science which had once
fascinated my whole being. I had learnt enough of the paths I had begun
to tread to know that they were beyond all expression difficult and
dangerous, that to persevere meant in all probability the wreck of a
life, and that they lead to regions so terrible that the mind of man
shrinks appalled at the very thought. Moreover, the quiet and the peace
I had enjoy