of the place. But, indeed, at the
moment they were not concerned with these; they had eyes only for the
black-robed figure beside the tripod.

It was that of a man, who stood with his back towards them, and he
chanted monotonously in a tongue unfamiliar to Sime. At certain points
in his chant he would raise his arms in such a way that, clad in the
black robe, he assumed the appearance of a gigantic bat. Each time
that he acted thus the fire in the tripod, as if fanned into new life,
would leap up, casting a hellish glare about the place. Then, as the
chanter dropped his arms again, the flame would drop also.

A cloud of reddish vapour floated low in the apartment. There were a
number of curiously-shaped vessels upon the floor, and against the
farther wall, only rendered visible when the flames leapt high, was
some motionless white object, apparently hung from the roof.

Dr. Cairn drew a hissing breath and grasped Sime's wrist.

"We are too late!" he said strangely.

He spoke at a moment when his companion, peering through the ruddy
gloom of the place, had been endeavouring more clearly to perceive
that ominous shape which hung, horrible, in the shadow. He spoke, too,
at a moment when the man in the black robe, raised his arms--when, as
if obedient to his will, the flames leapt up fitfully.

Although Sime could not be sure of what he saw, the recollection came
to him of words recently spoken by Dr. Cairn. He remembered the story
of Julian the Apostate, Julian the Emperor--the Necromancer. He
remembered what had been found in the Temple of the Moon after
Julian's death. He remembered that Lady Lashmore--

And thereupon he experienced such a nausea that but for the fact that
Dr. Cairn gripped him he must have fallen.

Tutored in a materialistic school, he could not even now admit that
such monstrous things could be. With a necromantic operation taking
place before his eyes; with the unholy perfume of the secret incense
all but suffocating him; with the dreadful Oracle dully gleaming in
the shadows of that temple of evil--his reason would not accept the
evidences. Any man of the ancient world--of the middle ages--would
have known that he looked upon a professed wizard, upon a magician,
who, according to one of the most ancient formulae known to mankind,
was seeking to question the dead respecting the living.

But how many modern men are there capable of realising such a
circumstance? How many who would accept the