Near the fire was a desk, with an arm-chair at either side of it. We took seats, and when William returned from disposing of my wet clothes, he brought along a tray with a bottle of whisky, a siphon and some glasses. The judge prepared two drinks and handed one to me. At his insistence, I talked for some time about the séance and the events leading up to it. "Remarkable," mused Judge Pursuivant. Then his great shrewd eyes studied me. "Don't go to sleep there, Mr. Wills. I know you're tired, but I want to talk lycanthropy." "Lycanthropy?" I repeated. "You mean the science of the werewolf?" I smiled and shook my head. "I'm afraid I'm no authority, sir. Anyway, this was no witchcraft--it was a bona fide spirit séance, with ectoplasm." "Hum!" snorted the judge. "Witchcraft, spiritism! Did it ever occur to you that they might be one and the same thing?" "Inasmuch as I never believed in either of them, it never did occur to me." Judge Pursuivant finished his drink and wiped his mustache. "Skepticism does not become you too well, Mr. Wills, if you will pardon my frankness. In any case, you saw something very werewolfish indeed, not an hour ago. Isn't that the truth?" "It was some kind of a trick," I insisted stubbornly. "A trick that almost killed you and made you run for your life?" I shook my head. "I know I saw the thing," I admitted. "I even felt it." My eyes dropped to the bruised knuckles of my right hand. "Yet I was fooled--as a magician, I know all about fooling. There can be no such thing as a werewolf." "Have a drink," coaxed Judge Pursuivant, exactly as if I had had none yet. With big, deft hands he poured whisky, then soda, into my glass and gave the mixture a stirring shake. "Now then," he continued, sitting back in his chair once more, "the time has come to speak of many things." He paused, and I, gazing over the rim of that welcome glass, thought how much he looked like a rosy blond walrus. "I'm going to show you," he announced, "that a man can turn into a beast, and back again." _9. "To a Terrified Victim He Is Doom Itself."_ He leaned toward the bookshelf beside him, pawed for a moment, then laid two sizable volumes on the desk between us. "If this were a fantasy tale, Mr. Wills," he said with a hint of one of his smiles, "I would place before you an unthinkably rare book--one that offered, in terms too brilliant and compelling for argument, the awful secrets of the universe, past, present and to come." He paused to polish a pair of pince-nez and to clamp them upon the bridge of his broad nose. "However," he resumed, "this is reality, sober if uneasy. And I give you, not some forgotten grimoire out of the mystic past, but two works by two recognized and familiar authorities." I eyed the books. "May I see?"