light, a grey shape, but
partially opaque, moved--shifting, luminous clouds about it--was
taking form, growing momentarily more substantial!

It had some remote semblance of a man; but its unique characteristic
was its awful _greyness_. It had the greyness of a rain cloud, yet
rather that of a column of smoke. And from the centre of the dimly
defined head, two eyes--balls of living fire--glared out into the
room!

Heat was beating into the library from the window--physical heat, as
though a furnace door had been opened ... and the shape, ever growing
more palpable, was moving forward towards them--approaching--the heat
every instant growing greater.

It was impossible to look at those two eyes of fire; it was almost
impossible to move. Indeed Robert Cairn was transfixed in such horror
as, in all his dealings with the monstrous Ferrara, he had never known
before. But his father, shaking off the dread which possessed him
also, leapt at one bound to the library table.

Robert Cairn vaguely perceived that a small group of objects, looking
like balls of wax, lay there. Dr. Cairn had evidently been preparing
them in the locked study. Now he took them all up in his left hand,
and confronted the Thing--which seemed to be _growing_ into the
room--for it did not advance in the ordinary sense of the word.

One by one he threw the white pellets into that vapoury greyness. As
they touched the curtain, they hissed as if they had been thrown into
a fire; they melted; and upon the transparency of the drapings, as
upon a sheet of gauze, showed faint streaks, where, melting, they
trickled down the tapestry.

As he cast each pellet from his hand, Dr. Cairn took a step forward,
and cried out certain words in a loud voice--words which Robert Cairn
knew he had never heard uttered before, words in a language which some
instinct told him to be Ancient Egyptian.

Their effect was to force that dreadful shape gradually to disperse,
as a cloud of smoke might disperse when the fire which occasions it is
extinguished slowly. Seven pellets in all he threw towards the
window--and the seventh struck the curtains, now once more visible in
their proper form.

The Fire Elemental had been vanquished!

Robert Cairn clutched his hair in a sort of frenzy. He glared at the
draped window, feeling that he was making a supreme effort to retain
his sanity. Had it ever looked otherwise? Had the tapestry ever faded
before him, becoming visible in a grea