picture of that monoplane skimming
down the sky, with the nameless terrors flying as swiftly beneath it
and cutting it off always from the earth while they gradually closed in
upon their victim, is one upon which a man who valued his sanity would
prefer not to dwell. There are many, as I am aware, who still jeer at
the facts which I have here set down, but even they must admit that
Joyce-Armstrong has disappeared, and I would commend to them his own
words: "This note-book may explain what I am trying to do, and how I
lost my life in doing it. But no drivel about accidents or mysteries,
if YOU please."

The Leather Funnel

My friend, Lionel Dacre, lived in the Avenue de Wagram, Paris. His
house was that small one, with the iron railings and grass plot in
front of it, on the left-hand side as you pass down from the Arc de
Triomphe. I fancy that it had been there long before the avenue was
constructed, for the grey tiles were stained with lichens, and the
walls were mildewed and discoloured with age. It looked a small house
from the street, five windows in front, if I remember right, but it
deepened into a single long chamber at the back. It was here that
Dacre had that singular library of occult literature, and the fantastic
curiosities which served as a hobby for himself, and an amusement for
his friends. A wealthy man of refined and eccentric tastes, he had
spent much of his life and fortune in gathering together what was said
to be a unique private collection of Talmudic, cabalistic, and magical
works, many of them of great rarity and value. His tastes leaned
toward the marvellous and the monstrous, and I have heard that his
experiments in the direction of the unknown have passed all the bounds
of civilization and of decorum. To his English friends he never
alluded to such matters, and took the tone of the student and virtuoso;
but a Frenchman whose tastes were of the same nature has assured me
that the worst excesses of the black mass have been perpetrated in that
large and lofty hall, which is lined with the shelves of his books, and
the cases of his museum.

Dacre's appearance was enough to show that his deep interest in these
psychic matters was intellectual rather than spiritual. There was no
trace of asceticism upon his heavy face, but there was much mental
force in his huge, dome-like skull, which curved upward from amongst
his thinning locks, like a snowpeak above its fringe of fir trees. His