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 statement that such operations are still performed, not only in the East, but in Europe? How many who, witnessing this mass of Satan, would accept it for verity, would not deny the evidence of their very senses? He could not believe such an orgie of wickedness possible. A Pagan emperor might have been capable of these things, but to-day--wondrous is our faith in the virtue of "to-day!" "Am I mad?" he whispered hoarsely, "or--" A thinly-veiled shape seemed to float out from that still form in the shadows; it assumed definite outlines; it became a woman, beautiful with a beauty that could only be described as awful. She wore upon her brow the _uraeus_ of Ancient Egyptian royalty; her sole garment was a robe of finest gauze. Like a cloud, like a vision, she floated into the light cast by the tripod. A voice--a voice which seemed to come from a vast distance, from somewhere outside the mighty granite walls of that unholy place--spoke. The language was unknown to Sime, but the fierce hand-grip upon his wrist grew fiercer. That dead tongue, that language unspoken since the dawn of Christianity, was known to the man who had been the companion of Sir Michael Ferrara. In upon Sime swept a swift conviction--that one could not witness such a scene as this and live and move again amongst one's fellow-men! In a sort of frenzy, then, he wrenched himself free from the detaining hand, and launched a retort of modern science against the challenge of ancient sorcery. Raising his Browning pistol, he fired--shot after shot--at that bat-like shape which stood between himself and the tripod! A thousand frightful echoes filled the chamber with a demon mockery, boomed along those subterranean passages beneath, and bore the conflict of sound into the hidden places of the pyramid which had known not sound for untold generations. "My God--!"