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“Moreover, when I took up a pencil in obedience to an impulse to sketch–a talent not normally mine–I found that I could draw nothing but heads, nothing, in fact, but one head–always the same–the head of a dark-skinned woman, with huge and terrible features and a very drooping left eye; and so well drawn, too, that I was amazed, as you may imagine–“

“And the expression of the face–?”

Pender hesitated a moment for words, casting about with his hands in the air and hunching his shoulders. A perceptible shudder ran over him.

“What I can only describe as–blackness,” he replied in a low tone; “the face of a dark and evil soul.”

“You destroyed that, too?” queried the doctor sharply.

“No; I have kept the drawings,” he said, with a laugh, and rose to get them from a drawer in the writing-desk behind him.

“Here is all that remains of the pictures, you see,” he added, pushing a number of loose sheets under the doctor’s eyes; “nothing but a few scrawly lines. That’s all I found the next morning. I had really drawn no heads at all–nothing but those lines and blots and wriggles. The pictures were entirely subjective, and existed only in my mind which constructed them out of a few wild strokes of the pen. Like the altered scale of space and time it was a complete delusion. These all passed, of course, with the passing of the drug’s effects. But the other thing did not pass. I mean, the presence of that Dark Soul remained with me. It is here still. It is real. I don’t know how I can escape from it.”

“It is attached to the house, not to you personally. You must leave the house.”

“Yes. Only I cannot afford to leave the house, for my work is my sole means of support, and–well, you see, since this change I cannot even write. They are horrible, these mirthless tales I now write, with their mockery of laughter, their diabolical suggestion. Horrible? I shall go mad if this continues.”

He screwed his face up and looked about the room as though he expected to see some haunting shape.

“This influence in this house induced by my experiment, has killed in a flash, in a sudden stroke, the sources of my humour, and though I still go on writing funny tales–I have a certain name you know–my inspiration has dried up, and much of what I write I have to burn–yes, doctor, to burn, before any one sees it.”

“As utterly alien to your own mind and personality?”

“Utterly! As though some one else had written it–“

“Ah!”

“And shocking!” He passed his hand over his eyes a moment and let the breath escape softly through his teeth. “Yet most damnably clever in the consummate way the vile suggestions are insinuated under cover of a kind of high drollery. My stenographer left me of course–and I’ve been afraid to take another–“

John Silence got up and began to walk about the room leisurely without speaking; he appeared to be examining the pictures on the wall and reading the names of the books lying about. Presently he paused on the hearthrug, with his back to the fire, and turned to look his patient quietly in the eyes. Pender’s face was grey and drawn; the hunted expression dominated it; the long recital had told upon him.

“Thank you, Mr. Pender,” he said, a curious glow showing about his fine, quiet face; “thank you for the sincerity and frankness of your account. But I think now there is nothing further I need ask you.” He indulged in a long scrutiny of the author’s haggard features drawing purposely the man’s eyes to his own and then meeting them with a look of power and confidence calculated to inspire even the feeblest soul with courage. “And, to begin with,” he added, smiling pleasantly, “let me assure you without delay that you need have no alarm, for you are no more insane or deluded than I myself am–“