mild for a fire, and he had to
grope for the matches before he could light his lamp. After he had done
so and turned up the wicks, the first object he saw was the bulbous,
long-necked jar which he had bought that afternoon, and which now stood
on the stained boards near the mantelpiece. It had been delivered with
unusual promptitude!

Somehow he felt a sort of repulsion at the sight of it. "It's a
beastlier-looking object than I thought," he said to himself
disgustedly. "A chimney-pot would be about as decorative and appropriate
in my room. What a thundering ass I was to waste a guinea on it! I
wonder if there really is anything inside it. It is so infernally ugly
that it _ought_ to be useful. The Professor seemed to fancy it might
hold documents, and he ought to know. Anyway, I'll find out before I
turn in."

He grasped it by its long, thick neck, and tried to twist the cap off;
but it remained firm, which was not surprising, seeing that it was
thickly coated with a lava-like crust.

"I must get some of that off first, and then try again," he decided; and
after foraging downstairs, he returned with a hammer and chisel, with
which he chipped away the crust till the line of the cap was revealed,
and an uncouth metal knob that seemed to be a catch.

This he tapped sharply for some time, and again attempted to wrench off
the lid. Then he gripped the vessel between his knees and put forth all
his strength, while the bottle seemed to rock and heave under him in
sympathy. The cap was beginning to give way, very slightly; one last
wrench--and it came off in his hand with such suddenness that he was
flung violently backwards, and hit the back of his head smartly against
an angle of the wainscot.

He had a vague impression of the bottle lying on its side, with dense
volumes of hissing, black smoke pouring out of its mouth and towering up
in a gigantic column to the ceiling; he was conscious, too, of a pungent
and peculiarly overpowering perfume. "I've got hold of some sort of
infernal machine," he thought, "and I shall be all over the square in
less than a second!" And, just as he arrived at this cheerful
conclusion, he lost consciousness altogether.

He could not have been unconscious for more than a few seconds, for when
he opened his eyes the room was still thick with smoke, through which he
dimly discerned the figure of a stranger, who seemed of abnormal and
almost colossal height. But this must have been an optical