pain, hoarse with anger, rent the air, and the face vanished.... I rushed downstairs and into the library. As I entered, the body of Travers came twisting across the room like a penny whirligig. His head struck the marble fire-place with a frightful dull thud, and he fell a motionless heap on the floor. I struck straight in front of me with a rifle--and hit something--something that pushed past me. Then the front door opened and shut with a deafening clang. A sudden qualm of real fear took hold of my heart, but, mastering it as best I could, I opened the front door and tore madly down the drive. I looked down the hushed street. Past the lamp-posts, skipping from the gloom into the light and from light into shadow, with a series of bounds, sped a horrible apish form. It bounded along with incredible fleetness, and was soon lost to view in the distant gloom. Just at that moment Clayton came down the drive. I could not speak. I pointed to the library.... I beckoned him to follow. On the floor lay the dead body of John Travers. The statue of Albertus Magnus had vanished! "And there the story ends. I can give no explanation whatever, beyond what I have related. The bronze figure has never, so far as I know, been seen again, nor has the restless spirit of poor Ombos walked again in our garden and library. But, taking the circumstances into consideration, the whole train of events points to the fact that Ombos _had_ in some occult way passed his ethereal body into that statue, and for that very reason he was unable to rest quietly in his grave." "You will continue to live in the house at Abbot's Ely, of course," said Duckford. Crabbe shook his head. "Never! I wrote a week ago putting it in the agent's hands for sale. There may be nothing in it, but I hardly want to make any new experiments now. The bronze statue has disappeared. I should like to think it was stolen by a gang of burglars. But I remember that chuckle--the malicious mirth of some unearthly thing, it seemed. And I remember ... let us leave it at that. I want to forget, to walk in the Sunshine, in the crowded Strand, away from the darknesses and silences. As I say, there the story ends.... I have told you all of it." * * * * * But Captain Crabbe did not tell it all. The best part was "strictly private." He married Margot at half-past ten on the following Saturday morning but one, at St. George's, Hart Street, Bloomsbury. II THE DE GAMELYN TRADITIONS