Another crash, and something shot through the riven door. It was a long white spike, gleaming in the lamplight. For a moment it shone before us, and then with a snap it disappeared again. “Quick! Quick! This way!” Harvey Deacon shouted. “Carry her in! Here! Quick!” We had taken refuge in the dining-room, and shut the heavy oak door. We laid the senseless woman upon the sofa, and as we did so, Moir, the hard man of business, drooped and fainted across the hearthrug. Harvey Deacon was as white as a corpse, jerking and twitching like an epileptic. With a crash we heard the studio door fly to pieces, and the snorting and stamping were in the passage, up and down, up and down, shaking the house with their fury. The Frenchman had sunk his face on his hands, and sobbed like a frightened child. “What shall we do?” I shook him roughly by the shoulder. “Is a gun any use?” “No, no. The power will pass. Then it will end.” “You might have killed us all—you unspeakable fool—with your infernal experiments.” “I did not know. How could I tell that it would be frightened? It is mad with terror. It was his fault. He struck it.” Harvey Deacon sprang up. “Good heavens!” he cried. A terrible scream sounded through the house. “It’s my wife! Here, I’m going out. If it’s the Evil One himself I am going out!” He had thrown open the door and rushed out into the passage. At the end of it, at the foot of the stairs, Mrs. Deacon was lying senseless, struck down by the sight which she had seen. But there was nothing else. With eyes of horror we looked about us, but all was perfectly quiet and still. I approached the black square of the studio door, expecting with every slow step that some atrocious shape would hurl itself out of it. But nothing came, and all was silent inside the room. Peeping and peering, our hearts in our mouths, we came to the very threshold, and stared into the darkness. There was still no sound, but in one direction there was also no darkness. A luminous, glowing cloud, with an incandescent centre, hovered in the corner of the room. Slowly it dimmed and faded, growing thinner and fainter, until at last the same dense, velvety blackness filled the whole studio. And with the last flickering gleam of that baleful light the Frenchman broke into a shout of joy. “What a fun!” he cried. “No one is hurt, and only the door broken, and the ladies frightened. But, my friends, we have done what has never been done before.” “And as far as I can help it,” said Harvey Deacon, “it will certainly never be done again.”