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“I had forgotten.” Borsdale withdrew, and presently returned with a bone-handled knife. And then he made a light. “Are you quite ready, sir?”

Sir Thomas Browne, that aging amateur of the curious, could not resist a laugh.

And then they sat about proceedings of which, for obvious reasons, the details are best left unrecorded. It was not an unconscionable while before they seemed to be aware of unusual phenomena. But as Sir Thomas always pointed out, in subsequent discussions, these were quite possibly the fruitage of excited imagination.

“Now, Philip!–now, give me the knife!” cried Sir Thomas Browne. He knew for the first time, despite many previous mischancy happenings, what real terror was.

The room was thick with blinding smoke by this, so that Borsdale could see nothing save his co-partner in this adventure. Both men were shaken by what had occurred before. Borsdale incuriously perceived that old Sir Thomas rose, tense as a cat about to pounce, and that he caught the unstained knife from Borsdale’s hand, and flung it like a javelin into the vapor which encompassed them. This gesture stirred the smoke so that Borsdale could see the knife quiver and fall, and note the tiny triangle of unbared plaster it had cut in the painted woman’s breast. Within the same instant he had perceived a naked man who staggered.

“Iz adu kronyeshnago—-!” The intruder’s thin, shrill wail was that of a frightened child. The man strode forward, choked, seemed to grope his way. His face was not good to look at. Horror gripped and tore at every member of the cadaverous old body, as a high wind tugs at a flag. The two witnesses of Herrick’s agony did not stir during the instant wherein the frenzied man stooped, moving stiffly like an ill-made toy, and took up the knife.

“Oh, yes, I knew what he was about to do,” said Sir Thomas Browne afterward, in his quiet fashion. “I did not try to stop him. If Herrick had been my dearest friend, I would not have interfered. I had seen his face, you comprehend. Yes, it was kinder to let him die. It was curious, though, as he stood there hacking his chest, how at each stab he deliberately twisted the knife. I suppose the pain distracted his mind from what he was remembering. I should have forewarned Borsdale of this possible outcome at the very first, I suppose. But, then, which one of us is always wise?”

So this adventure came to nothing. For its significance, if any, hinged upon Robert Herrick’s sanity, which was at best a disputable quantity. Grant him insane, and the whole business, as Sir Thomas was at large pains to point out, dwindles at once into the irresponsible vagaries of a madman.

“And all the while, for what we know, he had been hiding somewhere in the house. We never searched it. Oh, yes, there is no doubt he was insane,” said Sir Thomas, comfortably.

“Faith! what he moaned was gibberish, of course—-“

“Oddly enough, his words were intelligible. They meant in Russian ‘Out of the lowest hell.'”

“But, why, in God’s name, Russian?”

“I am sure I do not know,” Sir Thomas replied; and he did not appear at all to regret his ignorance.

But Borsdale meditated, disappointedly. “Oh, yes, the outcome is ambiguous, Sir Thomas, in every way. I think we may safely take it as a warning, in any event, that this world of ours, whatever its deficiencies, was meant to be inhabited by men and women only.”

“Now I,” was Sir Thomas’s verdict, “prefer to take it as a warning that insane people ought to be restrained.”

“Ah, well, insanity is only one of the many forms of being abnormal. Yes, I think it proves that all abnormal people ought to be restrained. Perhaps it proves that they are very potently restrained,” said Philip Borsdale, perversely.