“If I go to Unorna and ask a consultation of her, as though she were a common somnambulist, and if she deigns to place her powers at my disposal what sort of assistance shall I most probably get?” They had been walking slowly forward, and Keyork again stopped, rapping the pavement with his iron-shod stick, and looking up from under his bushy, overhanging eyebrows. “Of two things, one will happen,” he answered. “Either she will herself fall into the abnormal state and will answer correctly any questions you put to her, or she will hypnotise you, and you will yourself see--what you wish to see.” “I myself?” “You yourself. The peculiarity of the woman is her duality, her double power. She can, by an act of volition, become hypnotic, clairvoyant--whatever you choose to call it. Or, if her visitor is at all sensitive, she can reverse the situation and play the part of the hypnotiser. I never heard of a like case.” “After all, I do not see why it should not be so,” said the Wanderer thoughtfully. “At all events, whatever she can do, is evidently done by hypnotism, and such extraordinary experiments have succeeded of late--” “I did not say that there was nothing but hypnotism in her processes.” “What then? Magic?” The Wanderer’s lip curled scornfully. “I do not know,” replied the little man, speaking slowly. “Whatever her secret may be, she keeps it, even when speaking in sleep. This I can tell you. I suspect that there is some other being, or person, in that queer old house of hers whom she consults on grave occasions. At a loss for an answer to a difficult scientific question, I have known her to leave the room and to come back in the course of a few minutes with a reply which I am positive she could never have framed herself.” “She may have consulted books,” suggested the Wanderer. “I am an old man,” said Keyork Arabian suddenly. “I am a very old man; there are not many books which I have not seen and partially read at one time or at another, and my memory is surprisingly good. I have excellent reasons for believing that her information is not got from anything that was ever written or printed.” “May I ask of what general nature your questions were?” inquired the other, more interested than he had hitherto been in the conversation. “They referred to the principles of embalmment.” “Much has been written about that since the days of the Egyptians.” “The Egyptians!” exclaimed Keyork with great scorn. “They embalmed their dead after a fashion. Did you ever hear that they embalmed the living?” The little man’s eyes shot fire. “No, nor will I believe in any such outrageous impossibilities! If that is all, I have little faith in Unorna’s mysterious counsellor.”