Bentlemeyer was already in his robes when one of the pupils admitted me. I changed into the necessary garments, took the rod and girdle which he had lent me, and placed the snake-hilted poniard in its belt sheath. The circle of evocation had been marked out in chalk on the floor. The prepared candles burnt in the angles of the pentacle and the saucers of salt and the elements were in their appropriate places. The sorcerer stood within his circle of protection facing the small tripod brazier in which was a brazen plate glowing over the frame of a small spirit lamp. I took my place within the _enceinte_ of a similar diagram, and on a couch, lying between us, was Walther, the assistant. The candle lights burnt in the draughtless atmosphere, the dull yellowish flames standing up without a flicker, sending their faint tail of black smoke toward the ceiling. Beyond the confines of our protective circles was a grotesque bronze bowl or shallow basin. Bentlemeyer removed the black velvet hood that covered it and the filmy crimson surface of fresh blood gleamed in the light. At a sign we began the chanting of the preliminary invocations to the guardians of the gates. The room was sonorous with the great Hebrew names, and from time to time a fresh pinch of incense on the brazier would send a wreath of pungent fume across the room. The boy on the couch breathed heavily, loosened the restriction of his garments, and soon subsided into a definite state of trance. From invocation we changed to the ritual of evocation. And before the echoes of the first summons had died down, a cold wind seemed to burst out in the very heart of the room itself, making the candles flicker and the shadows flit and dance in arabesques across the low ceiling. I felt for the poniard at my belt and drawing it from its sheath held the naked blade ready.[30] The second and third utterances of the words of power intensified the effect and the boy moaned pitifully. Bentlemeyer signed to me with his rod to look toward the blood bowl. The surface of the liquid was being slowly agitated, strong swirls and broken wave motions appeared on the surface, sluggish, iridescent bubbles floated for a while and burst, and at last the whole body of fluid within the bowl was in a state of violent agitation. The sorcerer bent to a vessel on the ground and threw upon the brazier some new essence--not an incense. The smoke wreathed itself above the brazier, then seemed to take shape like a pillar and curve toward the blood bowl. Slowly yet distinctly the vapours clustered above the blood and slowly took semi-human shape. Incessantly they changed and melted--now limb-like, here betraying the outline of a demon face, there a pillared, smoothly working trunk.