“The Vampire, Dhoula Bel!” shrieked both Beverly and Im Hokeis in the same breath. * * * * * What passed during the next half hour, it would not be proper for me here to relate. Suffice it, that at the end of that time Beverly had fallen asleep, apparently of his own free will. What followed will be seen in the next, and concluding chapter of this work. CHAPTER IX. THE SLEEP OF SIALAM. Deep was the silence, hushed were our breaths. Quick beat our hearts, tearful were our eyes, for a greater than even Death was in that room on the Boulevart de Luxembourg! Seated in a large office-chair, his limbs stiff and cold with the damps of dissolution; his face paler than the Genius of Consumption; his heart and pulses totally moveless; his eyes wide open, and so upturned that not a speck of aught but the uncolored portions thereof were visible, was my friend. In previous years I had often seen him and hundreds of others in both the mesmeric and odyllic trance--the latter being the very common semi-comatic state into which sensitive persons often pass by the merest effort of volition, and in which they give off such high-sounding platitudes and call them philosophy transmitted direct from spirit-land to erring mortals, when the fact is, that the whole phenomena--when not simulated, which is not the case in over nine hundred and ninety cases in each thousand of its display--is but the concurrent action of a diseased body and an abnormal, unhealthy mind, and in many cases morals also, for it makes no matter how good or well-intentioned the subjects may be in the start, they are sure to yield before the accursed blast, and only the fires of hell itself can stop their mad career and turn them back to normal paths. Not such a trance was that we now were witnessing. In the course of five minutes there came a change in the sleeper’s face, which became lighted up as if at that moment his soul beheld the ineffable glories of the great Beyond. He spoke: “Now!” As this one word escaped his lips, the door of the room was silently opened, and two men entered and were about taking seats, when the Commissary of Police suddenly rose, made a low obeisance, saluted one of them in military style, and exclaimed, “The Emp----” “Silence!” said the person addressed; “all are strangers here!” And then turning to Dhoula Bel, with whom he appeared quite familiar, this person said to him, “At last?” “At last!” echoed the latter; whereupon the two new comers helped themselves to seats.