Hortotef entered
into the body of this infant who was his son, and whose mother was the
Witch-Queen; and to-day in this modern London, a wizard of Ancient
Egypt, armed with the lost lore of that magical land, walks amongst
us! What that lore is worth, it would be profitless for us to discuss,
but that he possesses it--_all_ of it--I know, beyond doubt. The most
ancient and most powerful magical book which has ever existed was the
_Book of Thoth_."

He walked across to a distant shelf, selected a volume, opened it at a
particular page, and placed it on his son's knees.

"Read there!" he said, pointing.

The words seemed to dance before the younger man's eyes, and this is
what he read:

"To read two pages, enables you to enchant the heavens, the earth, the
abyss, the mountains, and the sea; you shall know what the birds of
the sky and the crawling things are saying ... and when the second
page is read, if you are in the world of ghosts, you will grow again
in the shape you were on earth...."

"Heavens!" whispered Robert Cairn, "is this the writing of a madman?
or can such things possibly be!" He read on:

"This book is in the middle of the river at Koptos, in an iron box--"

"An iron box," he muttered--"an iron box."

"So you recognise the iron box?" jerked Dr. Cairn.

His son read on:

"In the iron box, is a bronze box; in the bronze box, is a sycamore
box; in the sycamore box, is an ivory and ebony box; in the ivory and
ebony box, is a silver box; in the silver box, is a golden box; and in
that is the book. It is twisted all round with snakes, and scorpions,
and all the other crawling things...."

"The man who holds the _Book of Thoth_," said Dr. Cairn, breaking the
silence, "holds a power which should only belong to God. The creature
who is known to the world as Antony Ferrara, holds that book--do you
doubt it?--therefore you know now, as I have known long enough, with
what manner of enemy we are fighting. You know that, this time, it is
a fight to the death--"

He stopped abruptly, staring out of the window.

A man with a large photographic camera, standing upon the opposite
pavement, was busily engaged in focussing the house!

"What is this?" muttered Robert Cairn, also stepping to the window.

"It is a link between sorcery and science!" replied the doctor. "You
remember Ferrara's photographic gallery at Oxford?--the Zenana, you
used to call it!--You remember having seen in his collection
photogra