THE DREAMING CITY

Mordecai Howard was mad. That much is agreed, at least by those who attended him after his return from the East. The archaeologist must be a man of imagination, but surely only a madman would seek for the remains of a city with no more basis for his search than scraps of ancient magic and the vaguest of legend.

It was true that Howard had made some particularly important contributions to the scholarship of the monumental ruins at Great Zimbabwe, but his allusive references to "the ancient texts" and his suggestion of still-extant cults as a source for his thesis were merely passed over by the archaeological establishment. Only with the eventual publication of his journals for the Eastern Expedition did it become clear that this was no mere occultist aberration but the very basis of his scholarship. The result, of course, was to cast doubt upon all his work, which is unfortunate, both for his own reputation and for the advancement of knowledge in his field. I am certain that the Expedition did uncover something remarkable, though whether it was quite what Howard himself believed must be a matter for conjecture.

It began in 1924, with the return from Shanghai of Howard's friend, Philip Wendigee, who in his day was an archaeologist of some repute, particularly in his native Holland. At this time, he was in his late sixties and employed in some unspecified capacity by the Dutch Government. The latter fact is relevant only in that his journey to China had a semi-official basis. The conversation between the two men that followed his return made no reference at all to international politics, a subject that held no interest for Mordecai Howard, but turned instead to the younger man's conviction that the dry wastes of the Gobi hid some remnant of a city that predated by centuries - perhaps by millennia - the coming of the present nomadic inhabitants.

This notion had been acquired from his reading of certain obscure volumes of occult lore, books to which few reputable scholars attached any importance except as manifestations of the eccentricities of the human imagination. Nevertheless, Howard appeared to take them seriously. He had spent many hours in the British Museum, consulting Ludwig Prinn's Mysteries of the Worm, the Necronomicon, and even the notoriously fraudulent Book of Eibon. This latter, he informed the sceptical Wendigee, he regarded as particularly important, since it purported to date from almost the same inconceivably remote age as the hidden city itself. It was, indeed, from Eibon that he learned the name of the city: Ishtaol, translated as"The Mighty". Further details could be gleaned from the cryptic text of the poet Alhazred, whose Necronomicon refers to an immeasurably ancient and long-abandoned city in the Sandy Desert to which he gives the unexplained and alien name of Sath' gon-Thargn. That this was the same place was made apparent by allusion to the patron god or demon of the city: the name given by Alhazred to this being Ib-steoll, which is clearly the same as Eibon's "Ishtaol".

At length, Howard had thought to consult an old book that had sat upon his own shelves for some months since he had acquired it at auction with the contents of a private collection. This was the 1843 edition of De Potentiae Deorum Antiquorum, written in the mid-twelfth century by that elusive figure Sir Geoffrey de Lacy and translated (and considerably expanded) in the 1760's by one Thomas Dashwood Morley, who described himself as Frater Mednamae - a Brother of Medmenham. Since de Lacy's original is now lost, it is difficult to be sure how much of the present text is interpolation, and of course it is entirely possible that the references that Howard found to "Ishtaol" were derived by Morley from his own readings of Eibon's grimoire, with which he is known to have been familiar. Still, whether it were truth, legend or fiction, the equivocal tale that Howard had read, of how old de Lacy had actually journeyed to the fastnesses of the great desert and there found the aeon-haunted ruins of the Mighty City, excited him strangely. It could not, he thought, be all the spawn of imagination, and even if the old man merely repeated legend - why, had not Homer done the same? And did not Homer's epic tale, so long dismissed as "only" myth, lead Heinrich Schliemann to discover the very walls of Ilium? Even while he disregarded de Lacy's circumstantial account of the spells and sacrifices employed to reveal to him the wonders of lost Ishtaol, preferring to rely on his own ability as a skilled and seasoned archaeologist, his inner eye saw him returning to England the discoverer of something as important as Schliemann's Troy and immeasurably more ancient. The truth of the elder texts would be confirmed, and the scholarship of history turned upside-down. All things would be his for the asking ... Dreams! Ah, dreams! The might of the Mighty City, the dreams of the Dreaming City ...

"The Dreaming City". That was what the unsavoury Ludwig Prinn called it, deriving the name from the Arab's allusions to "Sath'gon-Thargn". Information from certain dubious occult sources had persuaded him that after many centuries of prosperity under the patronage of the god Ishtaol the human dwellers in the city (Prinn stressed their humanity in a curious way) had undergone a sudden and disturbing change. The Mighty God had died, by what means none could tell, and with him died the might of the Mighty City. Prosperity faded, and in its place came illusion, madness and dreams. Prinn's account, here as elsewhere in his magnum opus, is so cryptic that it is hard to be quite sure of his meaning, but Howard understood that at least a devastating mental disturbance came upon the citizens of Ishtaol; those who did not succumb utterly to madness fled, until only the stones, the riches and the god, or his effigy, remained to mark the resting-place of the countless tortured dead. Whether the exiles were absorbed into the other communities of that then-flourishing region, or whether they perished as shunned outcasts, is not made clear. It is certain, however, that the city itself was sedulously avoided, for experience proved that the plague of nightmare delusion still infested the abandoned metropolis. No longer the Mighty City, it became known and feared as "Sath'gon-Thargn" - the Dreaming City.

Philip Wendigee listened to this tale with a sceptical amusement that rapidly lessened, for he had heard something of this before, and recently.

"Shortly before I left China," he said, "my business took me north to Tientsin. Here my host, knowing my personal interest in the exotic and bizarre, introduced me to another guest of his, a Mongolian merchant who dealt principally in the sturdy horses for which his country is famous. The social disorder following the recent death of the ruler, the Living Buddha of Urga, had made it inadvisable for this man to return immediately to Mongolia. Well, to be brief, my merchant responded most cheerfully to my questions about the legends and traditions of his land, telling a little that I already knew and much that I did not, but one thing he said puzzled me rather. He spoke of an area within the great Gobi that is shunned by the nomads of the desert, an area which they regard as sinister, because it 'affects their dreams'. That is what he said according to my host, who had to act as interpreter. You will understand that it was most frustrating for me not to be able to question the man directly, for even though he could tell me little of this bad place, what he did say was so vague and improbable that I thought at times that the translation must be at fault. He told me, for example, when I asked just where the shunned place was, that he could not be certain, for accounts differed strangely, and indeed one old fellow whom he suspected of not being entirely compos mentis averred that the area of bad dreams actually moved, so that one man might stumble upon it in one location and another-well, elsewhere. A patent absurdity, of course, but curious nonetheless."

"Curious and convincing," said Howard. "It must surely be the place referred to in the ancient books. Why, man, this is the key! Did your merchant tell you if the bad place had a name?"

"Indeed he did. And this again is odd, for the name he gave it was Tse-Quong T'ang or Tse-Quonq Tao, which seems Chinese rather than Mongolian. Despite the apparent reference to the eternal truths of Tao, however, I am assured that it has no meaning at all in either tongue. Mere nonsense, in fact. And yet ..."

"And yet," Howard concluded triumphantly, "this meaningless word bears a singular resemblance to the name given by Ludwig Prinn as 'Sath'gon-Thargn', which he translates as 'The Dreaming City'.

Assuredly, my friend, this is nothing less than a survival from the unthinkably ancient days before even the Mongol herdsmen came to the sandy dessert. Before, in fact, it was desert at all. Can you doubt now that something is there to be discovered?"

The Dutchman paused before replying. "No," he said at length. "Something is there, to be sure, but I hesitate to suggest that anything material might have survived the ages. Should you carry this plan through, as it seems you are determined to do, then I fear that you will find only a lingering and malign psychic influence. You are prepared to credit the one aspect of the Mongolian legends; do not neglect the other!"

But the younger man's enthusiasm had raised him beyond the reach of warnings. What he wanted now was help and advice, of a purely practical nature, and these at length he received from Wendigee. Together they studied the ancient texts, collating the information that appeared to be sound and rejecting the greater part that did not. Indeed, so many of Prinn's and de Lacy's references were ambiguous or merely vague that they felt justified in ignoring them utterly, while the tales attributed to Eibon of Mhu Thulan were so outrageous as to be clearly the products of a deranged imagination.

Wendigee offered to contact the Mongolian authorities, but the dearth of information he received merely confirmed his fears that the practical thinking of the newly established People's Republic had no time to concern itself with anything so backward-looking as peasant superstition. Maps were obtained with great difficulty, bearings taken and routes plotted. Permission to enter the country was somehow gained, and at last, by the spring of 1926, Mordecai Howard felt himself justified in assembling a small team to accompany him on his expedition.

It must be said that this team did not meet his fullest hopes, for many of the most reputable members of his profession had refused to associate themselves with such a wild venture. Still, the two archaeologists who did agree to come had proved themselves to be both competent and enthusiastic, and Geoffrey Challenor, the elder of them, had gained some distinction by his participation in the first of Francis Luttrell's major earth-boring investigations in Western Australia. Less was known about the capability of his colleague Julian Hardwick, but certainly nothing could be said against him. The photographer, Ian Dakin, had accompanied two previous expeditions to exotic regions, and the work he had produced had been very well received, both by the cognoscenti and by the public at large.

Howard's journal describes very fully the difficulties encountered in his search for the ruins of Ishtaol, but there is no need to describe them here. There is a single note in the journal to the effect that calculations based upon the "Trone Tables" from The Ethics of Y'gor had been invaluable in enabling him at last to locate the forgotten city, but there is no further reference to this particular work. However, three days later, on the 15th of May, an entry triumphantly records that the city had indeed been found, in the form of gigantic blocks of a whitish stone whose regular shapes could be discerned beneath the all-covering sand. The camels were tethered, tents were pitched, and a small celebration was held - which is to say that a bottle of whisky was broken open and shared between the four men before they retired. The following morning's entry in the journal begins with the happy remark: "All slept soundly. No bad dreams at all. What price superstition, Wendigee?"

Howard had drawn up a conjectural plan of the city, based upon Geoffrey de Lacy's account of his own visit to the haunted spot, but he found great difficulty in relating it to the waste of monumental masonry that his little team was uncovering. Most of the great stones, although plainly artificial and still bearing vestiges of incised decoration, seemed to conform to no pattern that he could discern, and as the excavations proceeded he was disturbed to find he was becoming subject to rather curious optical phenomena. Angles seemed to behave wrongly. He would glance at an apparent vast jumble of separate and unrelated blocks from a distance and instantly see them connected in a clearly intentional way, yet when he approached he found the connection lost. The independent megaliths were now exactly that.

At first the journal tells only of Howard's own susceptibility to this disconcerting effect. Perhaps he did not speak of it to the others, not wishing to arouse suspicions in their minds. It becomes clear, however, that he was not the only one to suffer from these illusions, for on the 24th of the month Challenor and Hardwick reported a most singular occurrence. It had seemed to Hardwick that two great blocks, roughly cubic and measuring some five feet by five by six, belonged together, since each bore a part of a representational bas-relief - severely eroded, to be sure, but still apparent. Making strict measurements, he drew each design to a scale of precisely one sixth and found that they fitted perfectly. This picture, representing a creature apparently ophidian but with a certain disturbingly humanoid overall semblance he showed to Challenor, who suggested that the two of them should attempt to move the two stones together so that the theory might be confirmed. This was achieved, with some help from Dakin, the photographer, but to the astonishment of the two archaeologists the result was not at all what they had expected. When Hardwick had measured them the two blocks had appeared to be within a couple of inches of the same size; now it was clear that one was fully a foot smaller on all sides than the other, and the relationship that made the two sculpted designs into one was lost. Yet there remained Hardwick's drawing to show that to him, at least, it had existed.

Conversation inevitably arose about the disconcerting optical effects that were an evident property of this strange place, and it was now that Ian Dakin confessed that he too had been plagued by odd phenomena. He showed the archaeologists a number of photographs that he had taken, and made the singular remark that the photographs did not show precisely what he had seen. Where only a disconnected confusion of stones had been apparent to him, the pictures showed evident relationships between the stones. He had not liked to mention it before, because ...

Strangely, perhaps, it was Dakin's photographs that proved to be the key that unlocked the mystery of Ishtaol. Howard and the others took to using the pictures as a guide, and found that the pattern observable in them matched very closely the plan that had been derived from old de Lacy's description. It was perhaps the most bizarre method of working that any of the archaeologists had encountered, but in the end it proved effective, and much was achieved. By digging at the points indicated, they were able to place precisely a number of the major buildings of the city. None of them was complete, of course, though two at least were in a quite astonishing state of preservation, and identification was as certain as it could be in the circumstances.

It is at this point in the journal that Howard mentions an extension of the disquieting visual effects. At various times all the members of the party, with the exception of Dakin, who seemed to be growing more withdrawn and uncommunicative, reported the strange impression of seeing one or more of their fellows in places where they were not. Frustratingly, these were never more than indistinct glimpses, though occasionally two of the men would seem to see a third - always in conditions that made it impossible to be certain of his identity. They would hail him, and be answered by a call from a different direction. Once, Howard, Challenor and Dakin were together when the two archaeologists caught a most disturbing half-sight of two other figures. Whether the photographer also saw them cannot be established, for he remained as taciturn as the others had come to expect. Needless to say, Hardwick was not even near the spot where the figures had appeared to be.

Two important discoveries now took place in quick succession. On the 17th of June, the lifting of what had appeared to be a large triangular stone slab revealed a similarly shaped space underneath, to which it had acted as a lid. In this space were two human bodies; they were no more than skeletons coated with skin, and over the next few hours they disintegrated in a manner which Howard, with restraint, merely describes as "unusual". Of the bodies themselves, he says that they were unmistakably those of a man and a woman, and that the shape of the skulls proved them to be of a quite different racial type from the native Mongolians. He adds further that they gave the curious appearance of being "elongated", amplifying this word only by the addendum: "not tall as we understand it, but stretched". His vagueness upon this point is typical of a regrettable lack of precision that becomes more and more evident in the journal.

The second discovery was even more momentous, and it led directly to an unexplained tragedy. The principal building of the city, from its earliest days, had been the temple of the god Ishtaol, and it was this that the party finally located, upon the 25th of June. "Building" is not actually the right word, for the temple, as de Lacy had made clear, was entirely subterranean. Howard's account again is not all that one could wish, but it is apparent that he himself, with the assistance of Dakin's photographs, identified the enormous block whose almost obliterated carven device of a single non-human eye proved it to be the doorway to the temple of Ishtaol.

The journal mentions here "the pit of the six thousand steps", but this appears not to be a reference to the temple itself, for a little later Howard gives the number of steps down to the great vault as precisely sixty-three. The relevance of "the pit", in fact, is left unexplained.

By means of some mechanism, unthinkably old but still functioning, the immense door could be swung open with surprisingly little effort. Howard says nothing about the quality of the air thus released, which suggests that it was not utterly stale, as one might have supposed. The hole revealed was a good twenty feet square, and the steps leading down into the blackness appeared to be in a state of perfect preservation. They were carved of the same whitish stone as everything else in the city, and were arranged in a rather curious fashion. There were three steps, about eighteen inches high, and then a level platform ran forward for fully twelve feet, after which three more steps led downward-and so on to the bottom. The vertical faces were carved with designs whose clarity of outline contrasted utterly with the ail-but eroded incisions and bas-reliefs of the stones upon the surface. Of the designs themselves, Howard says little beyond noting a slight occasional resemblance to the Babylonian. Generally they appear to have been utterly unrelated to anything that survives elsewhere.

At the bottom of the huge staircase, the floor ran forward for about twelve feet to an immense monolithic doorway, some twenty feet high. The electric torches revealed that in contrast to the profuse decoration upon the steps this great entrance was totally plain, except that over it was repeated the symbol of the single eye. Within the huge vault beyond was the first touch of colour that the men had seen in this ancient metropolis, for the floor was paved with mosaic tiles in sombre greens and greys, laid in an apparently random fashion. This was not immediately noticed, however, for the thing that stood in the centre of the floor took everyone's attention. It was nothing less than a statue of the god itself, and it was as totally alien as the carvings of its eye had suggested.

In shape, it resembled nothing so much as an immense lump of clay that had been allowed to settle into a rounded, bulbous cone, some ten yards across and six high. No individual features could be discerned, except for a dozen or so globular bulges freely arranged towards the summit. The material of which it was made appeared to be an immensely hard stone, differing from that elsewhere in the city in that it was pure white. Howard draws a comparison with a monstrously mis-shapen maggot - this may give a clue to his state of mind, since he is known to have had an unreasoning horror of maggots. Perhaps the most remarkable feature of the idol is that the flashlights revealed no sign of joints anywhere; the thing appeared to have been carved from a single block.

Nothing is recorded of the size or shape of the sunken temple, nor of any mural decoration. This may mean that there was nothing of note to be seen, but it seems more probable that the three men were so awe-stricken by the vast blasphemy before them that they had no mind for anything else. They spent no longer than fifteen minutes in the vault before Hardwick, who was not noted for nervousness, abruptly turned and left. The others followed immediately.

At the top of the great staircase they were shaken to find that the great slab which formed the door had swung closed, though no sound had penetrated to the depths beneath. To their unspeakable relief, the door was opened as easily from the inside as from without, but its opening disclosed tragedy. Ian Dakin was dead, his head crushed to pulp. It seemed that he had been leaning over the edge of the pit, looking downwards, when the mighty slab had descended. They could only hope that he had died instantly.

Hardwick, who seemed to have been the worst-affected by the exploration of the sunken temple, showed clear signs of a nervous breakdown now. He was of no practical help at all in the gruesome business of interring the body - for transporting it home to England was out of the question - and his behaviour rapidly became distressingly erratic. Howard and Challenor had themselves been severely shaken by the death of their colleague, and now their equanimity was frequently disturbed by Hardwick's tendency to wander aimlessly among the cyclopean ruins, muttering scraps of verse from the metaphysical poets. As his behaviour deteriorated, so did the nervous condition of his colleagues. Perhaps influenced by hints made by Hardwick - or perhaps not - Howard and Challenor separately became convinced that among the shadowy figures that occasionally appeared on the edge of their vision was one who strangely resembled Ian Dakin.

For the first time, too, Howard's journal mentions his dreams. Although he had so proudly recorded upon that first day that none of the party had been subject to nightmares, he now began to suspect that this had not always been so, that their conscious minds in fact had rebelled at remembering the dreams. It seemed to him at last that his own ego was losing its strength to resist, and that something or some force within the city was determined to prove the truth of his Dutch friend's warning.

The journal is frustratingly reticent concerning the content of Howard's dreams - there are equivocal references to "the dwellers in the wheel", "the swimmer in the darkness" and "the silence of the dragon" - but of their quality there can be no doubt, and it was a quality that increased rapidly. Each morning he would find it less easy to awaken to full cognisance of his position. "My brain," says one late entry, "is merely liquid, and its every motion can be felt."

The entries become increasingly incoherent, except on the rare occasions when Howard makes an evident effort to analyse his own mental and physical condition. Even then, a strong vein of fantasy is apparent. Little more is said about Challenor, or even about Hardwick, until the final note. Towards the end, after a description of the unnatural and excessive wasting to which his body had become subject - a description that impresses the more because of its impersonal rationality - appear such entries as: "Weather continues charming" and "Father must not know!"

The last entry is dated the 30th of August, though of course, it is impossible to gauge the accuracy of this date. I find something chilling in the very prosaic and orthodox nature of it, for it says simply: "Hardwick is dead. Challenor has gone to the temple. I think that I shall join him."

On the 4th of September a group of nomadic herdsmen arrived at the camp, accompanying a minor government officer. It appears that one of his superiors had become aware of the permission so casually granted to Howard's party to enter the country and had decided that it was not after all in the best interests of the Mongolian People's Republic. The deputy had been sent, therefore, to see that the foreigners left Mongolia without delay.

Possibly this man expected to find a group of capitalist spies; one cannot be sure. What he actually found was three corpses and one other, a man perilously close to physical death, and mentally dead. Mordecai Howard alone of his party had survived, reduced to a state that the horrified Mongolians assessed variously as lunacy and idiocy. At first they naturally ascribed the deaths of the others to the one living man, but closer examination of the corpses gave them reason to doubt this assumption. One man, whose head had been thoroughly crushed, as if by a great weight, was buried in a shallow depression, from which the wind had blown most of the covering sand. Certainly he had died by violence, though the wound could not be related to any weapon that could be found. The other two had apparently been stricken by some emaciating disease. The bodies were lying some hundreds of yards apart, but each showed identical symptoms; it was clear that they had not been dead long, and that the wasting had occurred before and not after death. Indeed, the same symptoms were already far advanced in the survivor. The report that accompanied the madman on his eventual return to England described the dead men's frames as being unnaturally attenuated or stretched.

The government officer who drafted the report had evidently read Howard's journal, for he scornfully dismisses the notion of a ruined city in the great desert, describing it as "diseased fantasy", though he does mention the destruction by his junior of certain "shamefully fraudulent photographs".

If any reference was made by the nomads to Tse-Quonq T'anq.the "bad place", the report does not acknowledge it. Perhaps the hint was taken.

THE BREAKDOWN

"It was only three nights ago," said Alison Myers, with a rather charmingly shy earnestness. "Richard happened to see Mr Cobbett yesterday and mentioned it to him."

"Right," said George Cobbett. "I thought that you might be interested in hearing the story, and as young Richard wasn't able to come along this evening I asked Miss Myers here to tell it to us." He pulled a face. "She might be more coherent than he was. In any case, I think you'll find it's rather up your street."

The girl smiled. She was clearly making an effort to appear self-possessed, but her slender feet were fidgeting nervously under the table. "I'll do my best," she said. "And please, call me Alison."

"Thank you," I said. "Now we're all friends, so there's no need to stand on ceremony with the old man here. Address him as George; that'll put him in his place. Now, tell it from the beginning and in your own way - oh, and if you'll forgive a jealous question, who is Richard? Your fiance?"

She smiled gratefully and nodded. "That's right. He lives in Romford, and that evening he'd picked me up from my home in Epping and taken me to a party somewhere in the country not very far from his own home - about ten miles, I suppose. It's fairly near Ongar and fairly near Brentwood; the village is called Navestock, and it seems to be all spread out and terribly rural. You probably know it a lot better than I do, because it's only a few months since my family moved to Essex from Sheffield.

"Well the party was a good one, very good fun, and we met a lot of nice people. There was music and food and drink and dancing - all that you'd expect; but the party itself isn't important. What is important is that it found us as we came away right in the depths of the countryside at about half-past two in the morning. Oh, I know it's very near London - it can't be much more than fifteen miles from the City - but somehow it seemed far more cut off than anywhere I could remember being before. You see, I've been used to cities, or to great open stretches of moorland and mountains. This area around Navestock isn't like that at all: it's all hedges and trees. The roads twist and wind until you don't know where you are. It's like being in a maze. You can't see more than a few hundred yards, and whatever is around the next corner you know that it'll be countryside still - hedges and trees and perhaps a farm or a pub. You feel that you're miles and miles from the nearest town, and that you could go wandering along those narrow roads forever and always take the wrong turning, so that you'd never get back to civilisation. Maybe I'm making rather much of this, but I want you to see the place as I saw it. I'm familiar with the open country, but this is all so closed-in that it seemed just a touch spooky. I didn't mind it on the drive out to the party because it was all so fresh after a day working in Town, but in the small hours I found it - well - oppressive. I could fancy that a little voice was telling me that I was trapped, that we'd be there forever, just driving on and on.

"It didn't happen, of course, because we'd only been gone about ten minutes from the party when the engine of the car began to knock. I felt a sort of tight feeling in my stomach, and I'm sure that I actually said to Richard (though he denies it), 'Oh Lord! We are going to be here for ever.'

"He just said, 'She's done this before, love. Don't worry. She'll get us back to Romford, at least, and you can spend the night at my parents' place.'

"He's a good driver, but honestly he doesn't know much more about cars than I do. That car certainly didn't sound to me as if it would get us even as far as the next bend in the road. I wasn't frightened, but after the high spirits of the party I suddenly felt very low. And sure enough, just around the next turning - it was to the right, I remember - the noise in the engine developed into a rapid drumming sound, and even Richard realised that things were not good. He stopped the car and hastily turned off the ignition. There was a very grateful silence, and I suddenly realised that I'd been quite unconsciously holding my breath. Even the feeling of being caught in a labyrinth couldn't prevent me being relieved.

"The relief didn't last long. Richard gave the engine ten minutes or so to cool down and then he turned the ignition key again. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. And at last he began to lose his patience. I won't tell you exactly what he said, but part of it was apology to me, and the gist of the rest of it was that he would have to call out the A.A. It's silly, but I remember quite clearly thinking, 'Surely they don't have phone boxes out here?'

"Richard said, 'Now, let's make sure just where we are. If I haven't made a wrong turning -' (If? My heart sank. I hadn't realised that he'd never driven along these roads in the dark before.) '- we should be about on Horseman Side. I seem to remember a pub along here where there might be a public telephone.'

"What could I say? I was a total stranger to the area, and all I could do was to trust him. I was terribly afraid that he would tell me to stay in the car while he went off to find a phone. He didn't, though, and I blessed him for it. I don't think I could have borne to be alone in that weird place just then. We locked the car and started to walk along the road in the direction that we'd been heading.

"Thank heaven it was a fine night. The sky was quite clear; the stars were bright and hard, and there was an icily light half-moon low down. It was a little cold, as you'd expect in late September, but not bitterly so, and our raincoats were quite enough to keep us comfortably warm. The road was dry and firm, and there was no traffic at all. You'd think that we might at least have heard the odd late car at a distance, or seen the reflection of headlamps on a nearby road, but there was nothing. Nothing, until

"That road just went on and on, and we could never see more than about twenty yards ahead. They say that a long road has no turning, but that's certainly not true around Navestock. We can't actually have walked more than about half a mile, but oh! it seemed so much farther. More than once I thought of taking my party shoes off and walking barefoot, but the road was so hard and cold that I couldn't bring myself to do it. At last I said that I really must stop for a few minutes and rest my feet. And it was then that we heard a car at last. Richard squeezed my hand tightly and said, 'Pray that he's coming this way.'

"I still don't know whether that car was coming our way or not. Certainly we didn't see any sign of it, though we heard it quite clearly. I suppose it must have been some lunatic driving without lights on a road parallel to ours - and yet I could swear that as it seemed to pass us I could actually feel the breeze it set up as it rushed along.

"Richard didn't seem to notice anything unusual. As the sound, it seemed to me rather suddenly, faded away, he just said, 'No help there. We'd better carry on walking, Ali.'

"No help from the car, maybe, but as we reached the next shallow bend in the road it seemed that fortune was with us after all. Ahead of us, not more than ten yards away, was the one sort of person we could most have wished to see. No details were apparent, but the shape was unmistakably and blessedly that of a policeman. He was standing quite still and seemed to be facing in our direction, so that there was no need to run up to him - even if I'd felt capable of running. All we had to do was walk the few yards and explain our problem. He could help us if anyone could.

"He wasn't facing us, though, as we could see when we got nearer, for the moon was pretty well behind us now. He was standing quite still, as I said, and his back was turned towards us. I think that at that moment I began to feel truly uneasy. You see, my shoes were clicking quite sharply on the hard surface of the road, and it seemed to me that this man must have heard, and turned to see who on earth could have been walking in that lonely place at such an ungodly hour. But the policeman didn't move. Not until Richard came right up close to him and said, 'Excuse me. Constable.' Then he turned around, and the moonlight fell full upon his face.

"I think I screamed, though Richard says not. I know I felt deathly frightened and turned away to avoid the sight of that face. Then Richard's arms were around me, and we were both, for a moment, shivering uncontrollably. When we looked up again, the policeman was gone.

"There was nothing in the expression of his face to upset one, because it had no expression, but it was the saddest, most horrible thing I've ever seen. It had no eyes. There were just two holes, ragged and circled with crusted blood. He was dead. He must have been. And yet ...

"That's really all there is to the story. We ran. I lost the heel of one of my shoes somewhere, but I kept on running, and in a hundred yards or so we heard the welcome sound of a car approaching and saw the gleam of its headlamps. Thank God, it was on our road. We flagged it down and explained our predicament - though you won't be surprised that we said nothing about the ghostly policeman. The driver was a doctor on his way home after a late call, and he gave us a lift to his own house, not very far away, where we were able to phone the A.A. A patrolman came within the hour and fixed the car sufficiently to get us home. And - well - there you are."

"And here you are," I said. "Thank you for telling us about it, Alison. It must have been quite a testing experience for you."

She shook her head soberly. "No, I'm very grateful to you for listening. You're the only people I've felt could hear me out without making fatuous remarks. But now it's your turn. Mr Cobbett - George -" (She gave him a shy smile.) " - implied that you might have some idea of what's behind it all."

Perhaps I had, at that. "I think - " I began.

But George interrupted me: "I'm sure you do, boy. But if you don't mind, I'll take over, since I spent some time yesterday evening checking the facts." He turned to Alison. "First of all, young lady, tell me whether you noticed anything in particular about the policeman's uniform."

"His uniform? But he had his back to us, as I told you, and it was really too dark to see any details .. Oh! Just a moment. Yes, there was something about his helmet. You know that the County Police wear those Roman-style helmets, rather like the City of London Police? Well, this man's wasn't like that: it was what I'd call the traditional kind of helmet - like the Metropolitan Police wear. You don't suppose he could have been a member of the

Met, do you? I mean, we weren't all that far from their area."

George shook his head. "I don't think so," he said. "You see, up until 1 969 , when they merged with the Southend Constabulary, the Essex Police did wear the more usual kind of helmet."

He paused to fish his pipe out of his pocket, and I took the opportunity while he filled and lit it to get another round of drinks in. "There are," he continued eventually, "many theories about what ghosts actually are - assuming you believe that they exist, of course. I've my own ideas, naturally, and it seems to me that you and your young man have been privileged (not the right word, perhaps, but I can't think of a better one) to see something very sad and in its way rather noble. Now, what was the date when all this occurred? The 26th - am I right? Very well then. I'll tell you what Roger and I believe lies behind your experience.

"In the early hours of September the 26th, 1927, two desperadoes named Browne and Kennedy went by train from the East End of London to Billericay, with the intention of stealing a particular car: a Riley that was garaged in the High Street. Fortunately for the owner, they were frightened off by a dog, but that's where good fortune ends. They were still determined to take a vehicle, and they walked through the town until they found one that was suitable. As it chanced, the one they chose belonged to a doctor. They forced the door of his garage and pushed the car out onto the road. Then they started driving back to London.

"Not surprisingly, they kept clear as far as possible of the main roads, avoiding those places, such as Brentwood, where they knew that policemen were stationed during the night. Well, they drove along those back lanes that run between Ongar and Romford, and the must have thought themselves pretty safe. That is, until a police constable saw them approaching, and signalled them to stop by waving his torch. They didn't stop. The policeman - his name was Gutteridge - did what any conscientious copper would do: he blew his whistle, and he must have been gratified when Browne, the driver, pulled the car over to the side of the road and waited for him to come up to them. As Gutteridge took out his notebook,

Browne shot him dead.

"Perhaps we're getting inured these days to crimes of violence, but sixty years ago the killing of a policeman was rightly thought to be a particularly horrible offence. And this crime had an especially gruesome flavour to it. As the policeman lay dead or dying on the road, Browne got out of the car and shot him at close range through both eyes.

"The usual theory, which I see no reason to dispute, is that Browne believed in the old superstition that the eyes of a murdered man retain the picture of the last thing he saw before he died. Or it may just have been indulgence in a known antipathy to the law. Whatever the cause, the result was the same, and for myself I believe that it accounts for what you saw. It's my belief that P.C. Gutteridge - or a part of him - is still occasionally doing his duty on that lonely country road."

"How awful!",Alison exclaimed. She was clearly and understandably fascinated. "But where did you learn all this? And where can I find out about it?"

"Ah, well ... If you want to know how Kennedy and Browne were tracked down, arrested and convicted - it was largely through the new science of bullet identification - then there are several books you can turn to. Perhaps the easiest to get hold of is Colin Wilson and Pat Pitman's Encyclopaedia of Murder. Try your local library."

"That poor man," she said. "To mean no harm, and yet to terrify people just by your appearance ..." We considered the thought for a moment, and then Alison asked hesitantly, "Should I-do you think that perhaps I ought to have spoken to him? Would it have helped at all?"

George shook his head wearily and rubbed a finger across his bushy eyebrows. "I think not," he said. "You see, if I'm right-and we know so little of these things, after all - then the policeman himself wasn't there, not in any real sense. What you saw, because you chanced to be in the right place at the right time - and perhaps because you're sensitive to these things - was no more than a fragment of personality, a residuum. You might call it a visible manifestation of shock. I'm sorry, but I can't put it more clearly than that. At all events, I'm pretty certain that P.C. Gutteridge himself has gone to wherever he was bound for, and has left nothing more than a reflection in a glass."

A last question occurred to me: "Alison, did you happen to notice the name of the road where your car broke down?"

"No," she said. "I'm sorry, but I didn't see any signposts at all. Oh! Wait: there was something .. Yes, of course. When Richard phoned the A.A. that nice doctor had to tell him where their man should come to attend to the car. It was -" Her hand flew up to her mouth as she realised the final macabre touch. "I remember now. It was Murthering Lane."

The various letters that arrived after his death were stowed away in a dispatch-box and left in the attic of his house in Holloway, where a year or so ago I found them. The one letter which I reproduce here struck me as being of extraordinary importance. It tells a strange and rather gruesome tale, which may be true, or may be a macabre hoax. It fits in neatly, as far as I can ascertain, with the reported facts of the Whitechapel murders, but I have been unable, for example, to trace any aristocrat of the period who might be "Lord Nigel de Lacy". The reader must make up his own mind as to the authenticity of the account.

"Mr Pike, "Sir,

"I reply to your advertisement requiring information about the Whitechapel murders of 1888. You will be interested in what I have to say, because I am one of the few who can truthfully claim to have met the murderer, and that on the night of one of his crimes. We had quite a conversation, in fact, though it was mostly on his side. I will tell you how it came about.

"Early in the morning of September the thirtieth, I was returning to my home in Whitechapel from an urgent and unfortunately protracted operation in the City. I was not a registered medical man, and the operation I speak of was of a certain illegal nature; you will forgive me if I do not go into details. At the corner of Mansell Street and Alie Street, not far from the goods station, I had my head down against the wind, and in turning the corner I bumped sharply into a young man who appeared to be in as much of a hurry as I was. It is quite understandable, for Whitechapel then was no place for anyone to be alone at night, even a man.

"But this young man was carrying a small parcel hurriedly wrapped in newspaper, and as we collided, the parcel flew out of his hand and burst open on the cobbles, and two or three knives or similar objects were scattered on the ground. I muttered some word of apology, and bent down to pick them and the paper up. The young man seemed too startled or perhaps too winded to pick them up himself. There were three knives altogether, of different sizes; two of them glittered in the lamplight, but the other had a curious dark stain on the blade which I soon discovered to be blood. I held this blade against the light to examine it better, and was immediately surprised, though I should not have been, to feel a strong if unsteady hand grasp the collar of my coat and pull me upright. The implications of the bloodstain were not lost on me, as my assailant saw.

"His voice was as strong and as unsteady as his hand, though a deal more cultured. It was evident that he had been drinking. 'Alright,' he said. 'You know who I am now.'

"I nodded dumbly, and he took the knives and their paper wrapping out of my hand. Two of the knives he stuffed into the pocket of his black cutaway coat, but he held the bloodstained blade against my chest. Then he let go of my collar, and turned me around to face him. 'Would you like to hear about it?¹ he asked. 'You might as well, before I kill you. I can't very well let you live, after all. God knows, I've just committed one murder to keep someone quiet. I shan't hesitate at another.'

"With the knife at my chest, he impelled me before him along Alie Street a little, and into a darkened passage between two houses, out of the feeble glow of the street lamp. He swayed a little, but the knife remained before me, its point just above my third rib. I could smell alcohol on his breath - spirits, I thought. Probably whiskey, and lots of it.

"'So you are the murderer,' I said at last. 'The harlot killer. ¹

"He nodded, and grinned. I smelt his foul breath again. 'You're as drunk as a lord, too.'

"To my surprise, he roared with laughter, almost choking. 'That's good!' he said. 'Drunk as a lord! I like that. You see, little man, it happens that I am a lord. You wouldn't think so to look at me now, eh?'

"He certainly did not look like the usual peer of the realm, although he was what you might call respectably dressed. He wore a black diagonal coat, as I have said, with dark trousers, a collar and tie - something of a rarity in Whitechapel at night - and a small, round peaked cap, like a sailor's. He stood perhaps five and a half feet tall, and had dark hair and a small dark moustache. I have since checked certain sources of reference, and found that he was twenty-nine years old at that time.

"He screwed his face into a sudden sneer, and breathed whiskey all over me. 'I shall feel very put out,' he said, 'if you tell me you don't recognise me, for my face has been in the newspapers before now.' He gave the knife a sharp dig against my rib, so that I gasped with pain.

"'Do you know me?'

"I shook my head. I doubt I could have spoken at that moment.

"'Well, well. It hardly matters, but I think I shall relieve your ignorance a little before I push this knife into its proper sheath.' He twisted the point slightly against my rib, causing me to bite my tongue in my efforts not to cry aloud. He grunted a little; I think he was pleased at the pain he was causing me. 'My brother,' he said, 'is the Duke of Lindsey.'

"That did surprise me. 'Then, you ..!' I began.

"The man I call Nigel de Lacy - that was not his name, but if your reference files are as accurate as they tell me, you will know whom I mean - this man, I say, was indeed a member of a very noble family. His own reputation, though, was that of a rakehell; he was the black sheep of the family, as they say. There was talk that the last Duke, his father, had been persuaded only by the pressing obligation to avoid a scandal from excluding Nigel de Lacy altogether from his will. Since the old Duke's death, however, and the succession of his elder son to the title, Lord Nigel appeared to have reformed his ways, or so rumour had it.

"'What are you doing in Whitechapel, then?' I ventured.

"He snorted. 'Ha! Call it social work! I have been ridding the streets of whores. Of a certain whore, anyway. They called her Liz, Long Liz. I think her real name was Stride. She was Swedish, anyway, but her English was better than I thought.

"'Some friends and I came down to Whitechapel about a year ago - before the old man died - and got roaring drunk. We were out for some cheap fun in the slums, and we went into a pit called the Angel and Crown, where we had no trouble in picking up a couple of whores. I spent the night with Long Liz in a filthy lodging-house in Flower and Dean Street. When I woke up in the morning, my mouth felt as if someone had stuffed it with cotton, and there was this common prostitute lying snoring beside me, with one arm around my neck. She was ugly and scrawny, and she must have been forty-five years old.

"'Being sober again, I detested her, and detested myself for having touched her. As I arose and dressed, she awoke, and said, "You'll come again, Nigel."

"'God! She wanted me to go there again! The thought sickened me. But what was worse was that she had called me by my name. If I'd told her my name while I lay with her that drunken night, what else had I told her? Hastily, I grabbed my coat, dropped a couple of coins onto the bed, and left the room.

"'For weeks I avoided all thought of going into the East End again, but eventually, for a certain reason, I had to go there, and of course Liz saw me. News moves fast in that kind of society, and I hadn't been there long before she came up to me and said, "Hello, Nigel," - she emphasised the name - "I thought you'd be back, dear. I've got a deal to put through with you."

'"I told her not to be stupid, of course, and said that I'd give her a sovereign if she would go away, but she just laughed. "It'll be more than a sovereign," she said.

"'There was something in the way she said it that rattled me. I told her that I'd call a policeman if she didn't stop pestering me, but she grasped my arm, and whispered into my ear a very good reason why I should do no such thing. Lord, but I was a fool! that night I'd got drunk and lain with her, I'd been more than indiscreet. The things that I'd said to Long Liz that night that I shouldn't have said - well never you mind what they were. I'm telling you quite enough as it is. Suffice it that the whore's object was blackmail.

'"Well, I told her that I wasn't a rich man, which was true, thought it took a while for the truth of it to sink into her stupid head. Eventually, we struck a bargain. She wanted a lump sum then and there, of course, and I didn't want to pay her anything, but as it was, we compromised. My lamented father was in the final stage of his illness at the time, and I knew that I was safe for a considerable sum in his will. I told her that I'd pay her a sovereign each week until the old man died, and when the will was proved I'd settle a lump sum on her of three thousand. I say settle on her; what I mean is that I would hand over the money in cash. That was the arrangement.

'"I had no intention of keeping to the deal, of course. Even at that time, a pound a week was no great loss to my pocket, but I was damned if I'd give the whore three thousand of 'em, whatever she knew about me. I gave her four sovereigns then and there to show my good faith, and went back to my cab, while she watched, with a grin on her ugly face.

"'Obviously, I had to get rid of her somehow. The East End is a ripe area for murder, and I suppose I could have sneaked into Whitechapel at any time and killed her, but even in the East End, people notice when dead bodies are found. Of course, I could have hired a couple of roughs to do the work for me, and maybe dump the body in the river, but you'll appreciate that I didn't want any more people in this business than necessary. Reluctantly, I decided on the absolute minimum for murder - myself and Long Liz. I let the matter rest at that for a while.

'"And then, some three months ago, my father died, and brother Teddy succeeded to the title. Liz Stride got to hear of it, of course, and immediately started to pester me for what she called her money. I told her that she would have to wait until the will was proved, and that there might be some complications. She accepted the delay with a very bad grace, and warned me of what would happen if the delay were too long. It was evident that things were coming to a head, and that the head would have to be lanced.

"'Now I suppose you're waiting for me to tell you how and why I came to dispose of those other damned streetwalkers - what were their names? Tabram, Nicholls, and ... urn - Chapman. Well, it happens that I did once meet Polly Nicholls when I came over to Whitechapel to see Lizzie Stride, but it's a fact that I didn't kill her, nor the others. I've no idea who did kill them, and I don't much care, but he's done me a good turn by it. When the report of Nicholls' death appeared in the 'papers, it was evident that she'd died by the same hand that despatched Tabram, and the rather delightfully gruesome way that she'd been cut about gave me an idea.

"'If I could lure Lizzie Stride into a dark alley, then it would be easy enough to slash her throat and her body in much the same way that Tabram and Nicholls had been slashed. Why should anyone suspect that poor Lord Nigel had anything to do with it, when Long Liz had so obviously become a victim of the harlot-killer? When Annie Chapman died the week afterwards, that settled the matter.

"'There were arrangements to make, of course. You can't just leap into this sort of thing, and besides, I thought I'd best leave a brief interval after Chapman's death. At all events, I contacted Long Liz, and told her that I'd meet her this Sunday at midnight-that's to say, yesterday, and more than two hours ago. I said that we'd finally settle things now that the will had gone through. I said further that I admired her good business sense, and had no hard feelings against her for taking advantage of my indiscretion. I had to steel myself to do it, but I told her that I'd like to give her an hour's pleasure, to show that I held no grudge. She agreed, of course - it's remarkable how people are attracted by a title, and besides, d'you know, I think she really quite liked me, in a way.

'"Well, when last night came - I mean, yesterday evening - I dressed myself in these old clothes, and carefully wrapped up this parcel. You know what's in it, and you know what the knives were for, but for Lizzie Stride that parcel held one thousand pounds in used Bank of England notes. As I say, I got everything ready, and slipped quietly out of my apartment and away from Hanover Square. I pulled the peak of my cap down over my eyes, and walked along Oxford Street towards the City. You'll appreciate that I didn't want to take a cab. Cabbies tend to be sharp-eyed, and I didn't want to be recognised.

"'That, of course, is why I'm shortly going to push this carving-knife into your heart.

"'When I got to the City, though, I felt I needed to boost my nerve. There was a good hour and a half to spare before midnight, when I was to meet Liz by a pub in Back Church Lane, and I decided to have a drink before I went on. I walked into the public bar of the George in St Mary Axe, and ordered a double whiskey. I downed that at the bar, and ordered another. Then I sat down at a corner table. I kept the newspaper parcel on my knee the while, as if it were really as precious as I had told Long Liz. It was certainly important, though I admit that I nearly let it fall under the table once or twice, as the two double whiskeys became - five, was it? Or six? I really can't remember, and it's not important. The fact is that when I arrived in Back Church Lane a bit after twelve, and met Lizzie, I was almost as tight as on the night that started all this damned trouble.

"'She was standing by a lamp-post, a little way from the pub door, and when she saw me, a toothy smile cracked across her face. "Have you got it?" she asked. I tapped the parcel under my arm, and told her I'd got a thousand for her. I'd bring the rest later. Meanwhile, there were things to talk about, I said. Her grin widened at that, and she put her scraggy arm around my shoulder. "Give me the money later," she said.

"'For forty minutes or so, we wandered about those little streets off the Commercial Road. God knows what I found to say to her or how I managed to say it, because all the time the effect of the drink was wearing off, and I was becoming more cautious. More importantly, I was keeping my eyes open for some nice quiet alley where I could take her and open the parcel. I remember that at one time she laughed, and called me a silly boy; I hated her for that. And then she kissed me! We'd wandered into Berner Street by this time, and I could see a man standing at the door of one of the houses; otherwise I think I would have driven my fist into her damned smiling face. As it was, I had to play along. After all, it would soon be over. I remember, though, that she had some sort of fern pinned to her dress, and that the pin scratched me as she pulled me close to her. I just gripped the parcel more tightly, and clenched my teeth.

"'At one point, a peeler passed us, and in spite of the drink I started to shiver. She mistook the meaning of it, though, and said that I was foolish to come out without a long coat. She herself didn't feel the cold much. "Well," I said, "you'll be able to get yourself as many warm coats as you like soon. Not tonight, though." And as I said it, a man passed by, and gazed at us with no particular interest.

"'She nodded, and said, "No. Not tonight. But some other night."

"'We walked on a bit, past the board school, and up towards the Commercial Road. There was a fair bit of noise coming from one of the houses, and I asked Liz what on earth was going on there. "Oh, it's their regular knees-up," she said. "International Workers' Educational Club. They have a debate and a beano every Saturday."

"'Then I got an idea. You see, I'd been looking out for somewhere quiet to take Liz and put the knife in, but if she'd started to scream in a quiet place then everybody would have heard it. Now, the noise coming from this Workers' Club would drown anything but the loudest scream - and I didn't intend to let Lizzie scream loudly.

"'At the side of the house was a double gate, open, and apparently giving onto a yard behind the building. Lizzie pronounced her own death sentence then. "Come on," she said. "It's nice and private at the back there. I want to see what you've got in that parcel." I caught a greedy look in her eyes as she said it (did I mention that her eyes were small and bloodshot?), and I decided that it really was time that she saw what was in the parcel.

'"I took a quick look up and down the street and couldn't see anyone coming, so I grabbed Liz by the arm and pulled her in through the gates. It was private in there, all right; pretty well pitch dark. I suppose there was just enough light for me to see what I was doing. Well, I went over to the wall on the right, away from the house, holding Liz firmly by the arm. I made sure that she was between me and the wall, so that she couldn't run away.

"'My Lord, but she was keen to have that parcel open! Couldn't keep her eyes off it while I unwrapped it, but her expression soon changed when she saw the knives. "The money!" she said. "The money ...?" And she almost choked. I told her that she couldn't really expect me to submit to blackmail from a damned whore. No, I said, I'd pay her just as she deserved.

"'I think she wanted to scream, but she couldn't. She just made a sort of gurgling noise in her throat. I stopped that pretty quick, though. I grabbed the neck of her dress in my right fist and clutched the carving-knife - this knife in my left. I'd never put a blade through human flesh before; it's tougher than you'd think. Still, I slashed her skinny throat in two strokes, one from the right and one from the left. I think the second one went through to the bone. At any rate, I had to step back pretty smartly to avoid getting blood all over me.

"'I was still holding the neck of her dress in my fist as I stepped back. Her body slumped to the ground, with the head hanging backwards where the throat was cut. The dress tore along the front, of course - it was shoddy material, and couldn't take the strain. Before I realised what was happening, there was a tear nearly down to her navel, exposing her thin breast. Ugh! It was unattractive in life; dead, and with blood coursing down it, it was repulsive! I itched to perform some crude surgery on that scrawny body. Until then, it had just been something that was necessary, to make it plain that this was another of the Whitechapel murders, but now ... I realised that I actually wanted to mutilate her ugly body. Can you understand that? She'd caused me so much trouble, simply by being her ugly self. It was her damned whore's body that got me into this scrape in the first place, and now I could destroy that body utterly. Ha! D'you know, I don't suppose that a little slashing and cutting about could have made that scrawny flesh any more unattractive.

"'I knelt down beside her, and I actually had the knife poised over her stomach when I heard a new sound over the noise from the concert. Even when I've had a few jars, you know, my ears are better than most people's, and I knew well enough what this sound was. A pony and trap, coming into Berner Street from the top. Now, we'd walked pretty well the length of the street, Liz and I, and I guessed that if that trap wasn't going down to the railway yard at the bottom then there was only one place it'd be likely to go at that hour of night.

"'I picked up the newspaper, and wrapped it hastily around the knives. Then I moved pretty quickly, and stood behind the gate-and not too soon, either. I'd just got into position there when the trap arrived at the gate. I think that the driver wanted to go straight through, but the pony shied and refused to go on. Perhaps it smelt the blood; I don't know. Anyway, the driver got down from the trap, with his whip in his hand, and moved forward cautiously. He must have been pretty frightened - it was very dark in the yard, remember - but he can't have been more frightened that I was.

'"I stood behind that gate and shivered, while I watched that driver walk slowly into the yard and start poking about with his whip. If I'd been a religious man, I'd have prayed; as it was, I just hoped that he wouldn't find me before he found Long Liz!

'"Well, he didn't. He'd only been a half-minute or so poking about with his stick - though it seemed an age - when he found the body. I don't think he could see it properly, even then. He bent over it and lit a lucifer. It took a couple of seconds for things to sink into his head, and then he shouted, "Murder! Murder!" and rushed to the back door of the house.

'"That gave me the chance I needed. I slipped out from behind the gate, and left the yard just as quickly as I could. I didn't run, mind you! I didn't want to attract attention. I was sweating pretty much - with nerves, not exertion - so I thought I'd better make myself scarce for a bit before I took to the streets again. I found a quiet passageway, and sat for a few minutes to cool down; then I just started wandering. I went into a pub in Fieldgate Street, and had another whiskey, which I drank pretty quickly, and then I thought I'd better start making my way home. I was coming around the corner down there, when I bumped into you, and dropped my little parcel.

"'And now you know how I came to be the Whitechapel butcher for a night. I'm glad I've told you, because I feel I've been rather clever about it all. It's a pity that you won't be able to tell anyone else, but that wouldn't be safe, eh? One can't leave loose ends lying around for the police to pick up.'

"Now, it would be quite untrue to say that I was not afraid, Mr Pike. I was very frightened indeed, and so might any man be who was cornered by a bloody-handed murderer. Still, I kept a clear head. I had not been drinking, as Lord Nigel had - you can't perform a delicate operation if you're drunk - and I had an advantage over him there. I decided that my best course was to throw him off balance, to annoy him.

"'Well, if you're going to kill me,' I said, 'hadn't you better get on with it? I haven't got all night, you know.'

"He drew back his lips in a grin, and his teeth gleamed - they were very white and well cared-for. He didn't say anything, but I think he actually appreciated the jest. I watched his eyes, as they suddenly dropped from my face to the knife in his hand - the knife with the bloody blade. Slowly, he drew the weapon a couple of inches away from my chest, ready to plunge it in. That was a mistake. His reactions may have been quick, but mine were quicker. He was drunk, remember, and I was not.

"Before he could push the knife-blade forward, I kicked him sharply in the groin.

"Not the action of a sportsman, of course, but then a sportsman is not usually fighting for his life.

"Lord Nigel de Lacy gave a short, agonised cry. His eyes bulged, and he staggered back. He dropped the knife, and clutched at his groin. I could see that he was trying to retain his balance, but he couldn't do it; he bent double and collapsed onto the cobbles, his whole body jerking at the pain.

"In an almost leisurely manner, I stooped to pick up the knife from the ground. With some contempt, I kicked his lordship's hands away from his body, and then suddenly thrust the knife-blade into his stomach. Again and again I plunged the blade into his flesh, until I was quite sure that he was dead.

"Then I felt in his pocket for the other two knives and their newspaper wrapping. These I stuffed into my own coat pocket. I took his wallet, too, thinking it might be useful. Then I gave Lord Nigel a final kick, by way of farewell, and went on my way.

"I make no apologies for what I did, Mr Pike. After all, it was his life or mine, and justice in Whitechapel can be brutal, as I think you will know. Besides, like God, I object to my name being taken in vain. Lord Nigel de Lacy as the Whitechapel murderer indeed!

"Wouldn't any man have done the same? "Yours truly, "Jack the Ripper."

man I seek. Let me make myself known. My name is Walter Garlick, and I have come here from Gate's Quay, on the rocky coast of Dorset. My home, if not my family, must be known to you."

The name of Gate's Quay was of course, familiar to me, as it is to you, cousin. "Then you come in the service," said I, "of Those whom we serve?" I spoke with caution, for one does not carelessly utter the names of power, but my mind was set easy - in part, at least - by the instant assurance that Mr Garlick was a

faithful adherent of C---------------------- . He had, he claimed, a mind to settle

here in Wrabsey, and so forge stronger links of friendship between two enclaves indissolubly bound by ties of blood and allegiance.

For the moment nothing further could profitably be said on so important a matter. I resolved to call as quickly as might be a meeting extraordinary of the Elect, and meanwhile to show all courtesy to this unbidden guest. Over a glass of good port wine, I commended to him the facilities of the Dolphin Inn, under the ownership of my good friend Silas Choate, while he sought for a proper dwelling in the town. "And I myself," said I, "may be of service to you there, for my small practice has mainly to do with property. A man must live in this world, you know, even while preparing himself for that other that we know of. There is a house but recently empty upon Murrell Hill belonging to Thomas Warden, who is of high rank in the Elect. Surely he would be glad to see it occupied by a kinsman such as you."

After some further talk of this nature, I asked him how matters stood in his native town - for you know, cousin, that I am of an enquiring mind, and hold that we who are so encompassed upon all sides by mere humanity do need to keep aware of the doings of our brethren, that we may better serve our Masters. To my questions he answered in straight but general terms, telling me nothing that I did not already know, but revealing a knowledge of Gate's Quay that certainly seemed authentic. It was a pleasant conversation, though necessarily guarded upon one side at least, for Walter Garlick, whatever else he might be, was an intelligent man and educated. At last, bidding my clerk to oversee the office until I should return, I conducted Mr Garlick out into Fish Street and thence by way of Salt Street and Church Lane to The Hythe, where stands the Dolphin. As we passed St Mary's church, he looked with an appraising eye and remarked, "It seems in good repair, friends."

"To be sure," said I, "for there are still in Wrabsey many of the common sort of humanity who cling to their fathers' faith."

"As we to ours," said he, "and with solid reason. But do you not find dissension between the men who attend upon Christ and the Chosen who swell the congregation of Dagon?"

"There has long been unease," I admitted, "but you may find this country somewhat different from your own. These marshlands, bare and bleak, that sever us from the rest of Essex, breed men to suit them. In this land that is not quite land, nor yet quite sea, the people are accustomed to uncover the secrets of both. They are, you may say, amphibious. Wrabsey is in England, but it is no more of England than is Gate's Quay, or Wyvern, or that place of wonders where our fathers dwell. No, the church is under the cure of the Vicar of Tolleshunt D'Arcy, but those who attend know enough to keep their beliefs to themselves. They know that we, and not he, are their kin. Will it surprise you to learn that some of them - one a warden - are faithful servants of the Council of the Elect?"

Surprised he was, none the less. "It is not so in Gate's Quay J Spies, are they?" .

"It would be wrong to call them so. They are but men. Men who know which way this world tends, and suspect to whom it truly belongs. It is not from within that danger comes, but from without ... Ah! But here is The Hythe, and yonder the inn. Good day to you, friend. You shall be summoned as soon as may be to meet us formally and, I trust, to be admitted to the mysteries of the town."

Things are not done hastily among us, who have a sacred end in view. None the less, upon the very next evening, the Sunday, the Inner Council of the Elect was gathered within the great Hall of Dagon, upon Murrell Hill, ready to receive and appraise the newcomer. If I name names, it is so that you, cousin, may appreciate the utter trust which I repose in you, as a blood-kinsman of like rank within the Chosen. Present, then, were the senior members, as yet untranslated, of the senior families of Wrabsey - those who, between them, two centuries ago, had brought destiny from the East and from the Sea. Aye, destiny and glory and fear! In full, the Council numbers twelve, but the Inner Conclave only four, viz. Silas Choate, Enoch Warden, Rahab Martyr and myself, Israel Martyr, as Principal! On so solemn an occasion, naturally, we were garbed in the panoply of office bequeathed us by our fathers beneath the waters - such robes as would make the recognised Deputy of the town sweat with envy and fear.

While Walter Garlick sat in the antechamber, we four deliberated upon his fate. I had not spoken idly in asserting that danger might be expected from without our ranks, and what was he, if not an outsider? Still, his claim was to ties of blood and allegiance (allegiance to the Great Ones that we know of), and truly he had that look about him that spoke of such. Nothing must be done in such haste that we would regret it, though to be sure there remained one final test or protection that should make all plain. We in our mortal state may be fallible, but our fathers who have undergone translation and who dwell in that other world (to

which, C------------- grant, you and I are bound) are far from such. On

their powers we may rely utterly.

At length it was decided to take the man Garlick, to appearances at least, upon his own word, and Silas Choate was dispatched to the anteroom to bring him before the Council.

This I must say in his favour: upon entering from the severe blankness of the anteroom into the gorgeousness of the great hall he showed not the smallest sign of surprise. Even our own younger Brethren have been known to exclaim in wonder at first seeing the barbarous magnificence of the mural hangings (predominantly green, purple and gold) which everywhere catch the eye, telling to those who have the knowledge and the intelligence of the wonders of that sub-aquarian world whence our fathers came to glorify mere mankind, and of that other, nearer realm where they now serve, awaiting the return of the great Dagon and his greater masters. And if Walter Garlick did not blink at this (but with such eyes, after all, he could not blink) , how much more telling that he gave no start at seeing the four judges (for such we surely were) who sat before him! Our garments of green and gold, woven with fantastic designs, our diadems, whose richness the King of England himself could not but envy - these alone must have bewildered mere humanity. But what could mere man think when confronted with our own selves? Silas Choate and I have still some years - even decades - to go, but Enoch Warden is fast approaching the Change, and so must appear most monstrous to men, while Rahab Martyr (representing the cadet branch of that same ineffable family of which I am head) was so perilously close that she could not long bear to be away from the salt water. There was little left in her of the corruptible flesh of humankind, and even in this haven she was then rarely to be seen abroad in the daylight hours.

No sign of surprise showed upon the face of our postulant (if so I may call him), but only, if Silas interpreted correctly, the slightest expression of satisfaction. Here was one who had in part achieved his goal. Very good, then. Let us know see whether he were fit to achieve it fully.

Yourself being a fully professed adherent of Dagon to the Third Degree will be aware of such questions as we thought it good to put. Had this Garlick subscribed to the first Oath, and could he repeat that Oath in full? He could, but so can many who are not of the Blood. Satisfactorily, too, he repeated the second Oath, but what of that? The supreme test would be the third and greatest Oath, and this test, also, he passed.

Supreme, did I say? In some places that would be so: in Gate's Quay, perhaps, and even in Wyvern. But here in Wrabsey we have yet a further ordeal, and of a very different kind, a kind that should not be revealed to the postulant immediately, for it occurred to us four (Rahab uttering thought in those indescribable tones that have already replaced mere human speech in her) that within three weeks, upon the last day of October, would be celebrated one of the two great Festivals of the Order, and that this occasion, no other, should prove the making or breaking of Walter Garlick.

In the meanwhile, we thought it well to tell him something of the history of our People in this place, and of their practices. From him, too, we might learn of how things were done in Gate's Quay. Similarities there must be, for our greatness all derives from a common blood and a common revelation, but for the rest we have also humankindness in our veins and are prone to fallibility and change.

We discoursed, therefore, of that great voyage of Jabez Martyr (my own great-great-grandfather) to the Indies and beyond, where he encountered those strange dwellers upon unknown isles and in unknown seas, whose form was not as the form of men and whose worship was not as the worship of men. Of how Jabez and his fellows (Ambrose Choate and Marcus Warden among them) embraced wholeheartedly the wealth of gold and of fish that the strangers offered, and with them the new faith (new but aeon-old) that was demanded in return. Of how, in 1629, the ship Sea-Unicorn returned to Wrabsey, with but half her crew on board, and that half having taken wives from those lands beyond the Indies. Of the treasure brought as dowry by those wives, and of the Charter of Regulation that Jabez had drawn up upon the instruction of his own wife, the Charter which for two centuries, in despite of the Deputy and his officers, has truly been the pattern for life in this town.

"On the thirty-first of the month, friend Walter," said I, "on that eve that the Christians call Hallowmass, the Chosen of Wrabsey will meet in full. Supplications will be made and sacrifices offered. Doubtless you have attended such gatherings in your own native place, and as a full member of the Order of Dagon. Here, we shall be pleased to welcome you as such. Until that time, you may come and go freely as you will, provided only that you stay within the town. You have our full permission to converse with the People of the Blood, but do bear in mind that they may not wish to converse with you until they know you fully. You may also converse with those townsfolk who are not of our kind, but you will, of course, refrain from speaking of matters which do not pertain to said. "Stand here at the portal with me and tell me what you see within."

Still his features showed no emotion other than calm self-assurance as he gazed steadily through the doorway into the chamber. Instead, it was I who felt an insidious unease as I heard his pronouncement: "Why, Master, I see nought but darkness. No-darkness and water! Master - " (he turned his face to me for a moment, and at last there was true expression there, of joy and wonder) " - this is indeed a great mystery! For surely within this room, within this hall, situate as it is upon a hill, is the sea!"

I trust that my own face betrayed nothing, though my heart within me was heavy, as I said, "Very good, brother. Now, do you remain here while we enter the chamber, and then you shall join us, no man forcing you."

"Oh, willingly!" said he. And at that my heart sank further, for it seemed, to his own loss and ours, that he was in all things sincere. But the Charter must not be transgressed, and the farce must be played out. Together, then, Silas Choate, Enoch Warden, Zillah Martyr and I entered, as we had done many times before, a room which we knew and saw to be a plain, square, unfurnished chamber. It measures fifteen feet in each direction, the walls and ceiling being quite bare, and the floor set with marble squares of green and gold, in a pattern that will be known to you.

Having reached the farther wall, we turned, and I said, not loudly, "Brother Walter, you may enter now."

Each of us bore a lantern, and the light fell full upon him, yet his expression was that of a man in darkness. He peered this way and that, and called out with some attempt at his former confidence, "Master, I can scarce hear you!"

Again, I summoned him, but more loudly. His own reply sounded very loud to my ears: "Enter, Master? Oh, yes, I shall enter. But oh! this is a terror and a wonder! In the name of our fathers, if only I could see you!"

My heart a stone in my body, I watched him, plainly gathering his courage and then taking a bold step into the room. Then I saw happen what I suppose my father must have seen all those years ago,

words exactly. After the Sheriff's men had read the formal deed of arrest, she said, "Before God and His angels, I do swear my innocence." You can imagine what a queer feeling it gave me to read that simple statement in the cramped blackletter print! All this was minutely recorded, because something quite unexpected followed. The brazen words of the witch aroused such an excess of anger in the good Master Thomas that before he could be restrained he had drawn his long-bladed knife and attempted to slash at her face. She threw up her right hand, saving her eyes, but receiving a savage wound nonetheless. In short, one of her fingers was wholly severed, and the hand badly cut. At this, she cried aloud and swooned. The constables had to carry her from the house.

The trial was held at Chelmsford on the twenty-seventh of June, and Janet Fisher found herself only one of three women arraigned before Lord Brian Darcy. The others were simple, ignorant souls, and their cases were speedily despatched. It isn't surprising that more attention was paid to the young, intelligent and attractive mistress of Abbotts Farm. I wonder now if she was at all aware of Darcy's reputation. If so, she must have known already that she was lost. He'd been the presiding judge in at least two previous witchcraft trials and had proved himself to be quite without mercy.

I read the whole report very thoroughly, though it told me nothing that I hadn't anticipated. The several villagers who gave evidence were plainly overawed by the situation, and in one or two cases words were actually put into their mouths by the prosecution in a way that quite sickened me. Nearly all mentioned the part played by Master Rosemary in building up suspicion against the accused, and yet none of them was questioned on this point. Every insinuation appeared to be accepted as fact. Dame Alice didn't testify, and her son's evidence was kept to a minimum. No mention at all was made of the fact that he was the sole heir to the estate of Abbotts.

The verdict was inevitable - guilty. The sentence was death by hanging. It was carried out the following day in the open space in front of the Sessions House, where Tindal Square is now. The old courthouse was replaced, as you know, in 1789 by John Johnson's Shire Hall, and the whole place is so changed that when I walked around there after leaving the Record Office I could gain no impressions from it at all.

That was the end of Janet Fisher, branded as a witch and hanged without compassion. But it wasn't the end of the affair, because about fifteen years later Alice Rosemary died of a stroke. Her son Thomas must have had a spark of independent humanity in him after all, because the day after her funeral he went to the Sheriff's office and confessed to the whole sordid plot. He said that he was troubled by the thought of eternal ignominy attaching to the memory of an innocent woman. Maybe he really did love her a little, or had at least managed to persuade himself that he did. His confession was duly noted, and a copy of it survives in the County Archives, but no action was taken. Can you beat it? Nothing was done, and Thomas Rosemary went back to Winstock and his family. He died, according to the parish register, in March of 1611 .

Well, that's the story behind the reality of my vision, but of course I already knew that it was so, and details of the story had combined to explain my own part in it. I knew what to do with the severed finger, and now I knew why.

Oh, I must tell you what the account said on that point, because it clarified matters wonderfully. There was just a brief, casual statement in the report of Janet Fisher's arrest. Thomas Rosemary, in his savage attack on her, had managed to cut off one of the fingers of her right hand - and as I knew, because I had seen, it was the forefinger. Now, in the confusion following all this, when the poor child had collapsed, nobody had given any thought to the severed finger, and when one of the constables looked for it later it was not to be found. The assumption was that some servant, still faithful, or some ghoul among the bystanders had pocketed it as a gruesome memento. It was a reasonable notion, but quite wrong, as you can see. Quite wrong.

I am certain, positive, that it had been waiting for me. Somewhere - or nowhere - it had been waiting for me.

George was busily filling his pipe. Without looking up he asked - although we both knew the answer - "What did you do with it?"

Robert spread out his strong hands. "Just what I'd promised I'd do. I sealed the box that I'd put it in, and that night I took it along to Winstock churchyard. I found a quiet corner where it wouldn't be disturbed, and I buried it." He looked sharply at us, as if daring us to dispute the Tightness of the action. "I took along a copy of The Book of Common Prayer that I'd bought at Clarke's in Chelmsford, and I read over the burial service. She wouldn't have had a Christian burial, you see."

I toyed with my glass for a moment, and as George didn't seem inclined to speak I asked the obvious question: "Why? I mean, it was a nice gesture, and a good one - perhaps I'd have done the same - but why this insistence on it? You speak as if you were paying off a debt."

"I'm sorry, but I thought you knew. 'Paying off a debt' is about right. Ah, well ... I've not been able to trace the family all the way back, but it's a pretty distinctive name, and there's no doubt at all in my own mind. You see, my mother's maiden name was Rosemary."

De Potentiae Deorum Antiquorum, though since only Morley's revision now exists one can't be sure how much is original and how much interpolation. At all events, de Lacy claims to have made what he terms a pilgrimage from Arabia through India to the wastes of the Gobi in search of the Dreaming City. It must have been a journey of almost incomprehensible difficulty and danger, yet the old man not only accomplished it but brought something back with him, something aeon-old and of quite incalculable value. I don't know whether Mordecai Howard misunderstood this reference or whether he simply ignored it. The latter, probably, for his interest was mainly archaeological. Nevertheless, it was the thought of de Lacy's prize that inspired my own journey.

"Oh, the hours - the days and weeks - that I spent in reading those books! All this, I may say, after many months spent in gaining access to them for some are quite fabulously rare. I was obliged to travel great distances before I could even begin the research for my principal journey. What shall I say of the books themselves? Some of the titles may be familiar to you. There are hints of the matter in the Cultes des Goules, in De Vermis Mysteriis and even the occasional allusion in the Necronomicon, confirming a brief reference made by old de Lacy. At the end of it all, I was torn between the desire to mount a full-scale expedition immediately and the wish to dismiss it all as unwholesome, morbid lunacy. What I actually did was to seclude myself for a full two weeks and consider the whole matter carefully. By the end of that time, it was clear to me that there was at least a majority of truth in it all, but that such a - treasure-hunt, shall I call it? - would need all my courage and knowledge that could only be gained through much further research.

"Ishtaol exists. Be in no doubt about that. Over the millennia, ruined and devastated, it has survived. But it is guarded, and guarded by the very thing that I must seek. The city is almost unbelievably old - prehuman, certainly, if one may believe such unreliable texts as the Liber Ivonis. Yet its guardian is older still.

"This is not a time for a theological debate. I shall mention only that the gods of our own people - and I go back to the

Norsemen, the Celts, the Greeks and Romans - are all, to a major extent, anthropomorphic. But as you dig more deeply, you will find that it was not so in the days of the vanished past. The beings worshipped then were not merely unhuman but literally unearthly. Most of mankind is only now beginning to recognise this as a possibility, but I tell you that it is fact, and that I have seen one of these ancient gods, one of these dei antiqui." "You mean - ?"

"I mean Ishtaol. For the god or demon that guards the city is also known as Ishtaol. It was worshipped and propitiated by the original denizens, the unknown creatures that built the place, and later by the first human beings who dwelt there. In time, however, over many thousands of years, a lassitude came upon the god, incomprehensible to its human votaries, and an appearance of death. I put it like that, because I am quite certain that Ishtaol did not die, but merely entered a phase in its all-but-eternal life that could be compared to sleep. A prosaic, but not, I think, inapt comparison, for this sleep gave rise to dreams. And as the god dreamed, so did the inhabitants of the city, and being merely human their minds could not cope with the dreams of a god. Those who did not go mad deserted the place and went to live among the other peoples of that then-flourishing region.

"As the ages passed, so the abandoned city lost its reality in the world of men. It became known as Sath'gon Thargn, which means no more than "the Dreaming City", and passed into legend before becoming almost entirely forgotten. That fertile area of east central Asia was in time lost to men, save for the nomadic Mongolians. For millennia now it has been Gobi or Shamo, the Sandy Desert. But Ishtaol survives, and the dreams of its god have complete sway.

"I studied, far more deeply than poor Howard did, the ways of finding the city and the means of protecting myself while therefor as his case shows too clearly no unprepared man is proof against the devastating delirious impact of the dreams of Ishtaol. From intimations made by Alhazred and by Ludwig Prinn, and from fuller directions left by Geoffrey de Lacy, I eventually assembled a psychic armoury of both incantations and physical objects that I believed would protect me from the worst harm."

"One moment! You speak of 'ways' of finding the city. Howard's way seems to have been straightforward enough, and he found the place, or so you imply ..."

"Howard was lucky - though do bear in mind that luck may be good or bad. I mean just what I say when I refer to 'ways'. There are aspects of Ishtaol that Howard did not know, or did not understand. You must realise that the millennial dreams of a god have had a far deeper and more devastating effect upon the city than poor Howard imagined. It cannot, I think be explained in terms of our present-day science, but you may take it as fact that Ishtaol no longer exists entirely in our world. It has gradually slid, or been pushed, into a crack - a fissure - between our world and others. Howard, I say, was lucky. He saw the ruined city, and there it was. But not every man may see Ishtaol, and not every man may find it where it is seen. Understand: I do not speak of mirages, which are a property of the desert. This elusiveness is a property of the city itself, or of its god. Hence the absolute need for my intense research. I learned much from de Lacy, more from Alhazred, and most - surprisingly - from the mage Eibon, who claimed to have encountered such things himself, in lands long vanished.

"Mordecal Howard went on a scientific expedition. His way, as you rightly observed, was straightforward, but it was not my way. I went on a pilgrimage, and I went along, though at no time until I was within twenty miles of the place where I knew Ishtaol to be found did I eschew the assistance of native guides. My preparations had been long, exhaustive and often tedious, but they proved invaluable. Unlike Howard, I emerged alive and sane-without my right hand, to be sure, but with a treasure such as Howard could not have conceived.

"What shall I say of the city? Imagine vast, dreary, windblown wastes of sand stretching to the horizon and seemingly endlessly on. That desert is relieved only by the almost completely buried shapes of huge blocks of a whitish stone which even the passing of ages has not rendered entirely smooth. The keen eye sees at once that they are artificial, and a closer scrutiny reveals almost obliterated incisions and bas-reliefs, some bearing a vague resemblance to the Babylonian, while others seem totally alien. It must be hard for you to comprehend - as it was for me - the immense, almost incalculable age of those great megaliths. I should have been totally prepared, but as I gazed upon that scene of total desolation, the stone gleaming silver in the moonlight, I felt such awe as I thought I could never experience and live.

"Even with the example of Geoffrey de Lacy to follow, I found it difficult to relate this apparently random debris to what I knew of the city of Ishtaol, and many were the hours and days that I spent in clearing that infernal sand from the stones, searching for some sign, some indication that would direct me to the very heart of the city, to the sunken temple wherein dwelt Ishtaol himself. A formula from Dee's Necronomicon proved of great help then, for if used in conjunction with the burning of certain substances it would cause things long vanished to reveal themselves. Only small things, mind, and only for a second, and I dared not use it more than three times, for the power it consumed came from within me. Still, in the end it was sufficient. I located the immense block, still recognisably incised with the device of a single non-human eye, which covered the entrance to the sunken home of the god. I found that its balance still held true, and that it could be opened with little more than the touch of a hand - and I opened it.

"I had expected the air thus uncovered to be stale, even noxious. It was not. To my ungovernable surprise it was sweet, with something of the acid sweetness of citrus. What was the cause of this I could not tell, and nor do I know now. I merely state it as fact. Being warned by something that de Lacy said, I did not immediately venture into the great chasm which opened before me. Instead, I first, with more strength than I believed possible, manhandled the nearest great slab of stone towards the door, so that it might serve as a kind of prop. It was not to hold the trap fully open, but merely to stop it from closing. That would be sufficient, for unless it was completely closed, it could not lock. Don't ask me to explain the lock, because all I can tell you is that although a man might open the trap from the outside, he could not always do so from within. I had no wish to take more chances than necessary. Next I ensured that a number of small packets, containing items which I believed would afford me some measure of protection, were in place about my person, and that the paper bearing a certain incantation was ready to hand. Only then, clutching my electric torch, did I descend the steps into the darkness.

"When I had taken my prize, I retreated as fast as I possibly could, pursued by mental or psychical projections of such appalling power that I truly believed my brain would split, and I would become as mad as poor Howard. But my protection sufficed, and the only lasting harm I suffered was purely physical - the loss of my hand. When I reached the top of those many steps I was horrified to see that the great trapdoor had almost completely crushed to dust my three-foot thick slab of stone. If I had delayed but another minute ...

"You will wish, of course, to see what it was that I sought with such determination. The prize that cost me my right hand. You will find it in the wall-safe behind you, wrapped in a cloth. Here are the keys."

Inside the safe I saw only a spherical object, about the size of a basketball, which I duly brought back to my host's desk. The cloth, which I had supposed would be of rich silk or something fitting for a great treasure, proved to be a simple bag or sack, made apparently from a blanket. The object was surprisingly heavy for its size. My mind turned to happy thoughts of solid gold, and I handled the thing with gingerly care.

"Oh, don't worry if you should drop it!" my host exclaimed. "The cloth isn't intended to protect the thing. On the contrary, it's to protect us. Yes, you may well look surprised. The fact is that it isn't safe to look at the thing for more than a few minutes at a time. The drain on one's spiritual resources is too great. The battery needs time to recharge. Well, don't just stand there! Take it out of the bag. I assure you that you are quite safe for the short time that I shall allow you."

Wondering, I did as I was bid. The object was indeed a perfectly regular sphere, not, as I had suspected, of gold or any other metal, but apparently of glass, like a clairvoyant's crystal ball. My disappointment must have shown in my expression, for my host remarked, "It isn't glass, you know. Didn't I tell you that it was unbreakable? You can test it, if you like - no, don't drop it on the floor! The thing is so heavy that it would probably go right through the boards. Look, isn't that a diamond in your tie-pin? Very well then. Just try to scratch the thing with it."

I tried, but to no effect at all. The diamond, the hardest natural substance known, seemed merely to slide off that strange sphere. Whether or not my host's story was true, the thing before me was incontrovertibly alien to the prosaic world I knew. As I picked it up again, something else about it impressed me. "Why," I said, "it's surely hollow!"

"Indeed it is. Hollow and partially filled with a clear liquid. See how it swirls, as you move the sphere. But look at it more closely. Concentrate on that liquid. Clear, I said, and so it is, but not quite as colourless as it first seemed, eh?"

It was true. What had appeared to be a clear, viscous fluid, rather like pure alcohol, seemed now to be composed of infinitely many different colours and shades of colours. Not colours, merely, but shapes. As I gazed, fascinated, I found that I was looking at a scene, apparently in the open air, which was utterly unknown to me. It was almost as if the thing acted as a camera obscura. The picture clarified, became solid: the entrance to a walled town or citadel - though the style of building was not one which I recognised, being composed of sinuous, serpentine waves and curves, without a single straight line or angle visible anywhere. Equally baffling was the material from which the structure was built. Not wood, and not stone. It looked for all the world like ivory - but surely that was impossible?

Now movement became apparent, as first one human figure and then another and then many ran pell-mell through the archway, scattering right and left in the most evident panic. Their movements and what I could see of their copper-brown faces spoke of an overpowering fear, a fear that somehow instantly communicated itself to me. What was the cause of this? And - God help me!-should I be forced to witness it? Unable to avert my gaze, I watched in growing terror as something shapeless and black, wet and glistening, followed through the arch towards me, with a quick and horrible ease. Still it came, pouring out, seemingly guided by an unimaginable intelligence, and then the nature of it began to change, and I thought I caught a glimpse of what might have been a face, utterly non-human, far beyond the arch, but approaching and growing rapidly more huge ...

"That's enough!" My host snatched the sphere from the desk and with a practised hand swept it into the cloth bag. "I'm sorry. Perhaps I shouldn't have let you -"

For a moment, his words meant nothing to me. I felt utterly drained, and sight and sound were no more than unwelcome impressions. Reality, somehow, was within that damnable crystal sphere. With less difficulty than he had implied, my host opened the decanter, poured out a good dose of whisky and pushed the glass towards me. "Here," he said. "Drink this. It will help to restore the psychical balance.

"I had forgotten how bad it can be the first time," he continued. "Eventually, with preparation, you become just a little used to it. Never wholly, of course, for we're only human after all, and though I've seen worse things than that in the sphere, it isn't all bad, by any means. Alien, yes. Nearly always alien, but not always bad."

"But what is it?" I demanded. "What have I seen?"

"The dream of a god," he answered soberly. "And man cannot safely share for long in the dreams of a,god."

"And this - this thing? You haven't yet told me quite what it is. Nor" - I turned my gaze to the lump of flesh at the end of his right arm - "have you told me how that happened."

"True, true. Well, I did tell you of my conviction that the god Ishtaol had not died, but had merely entered a different phase of its inconceivable life-cycle. I believe that during this period, which may last for countless millennia yet, its metabolism has slowed to such an extent that merely to move a fraction of an inch may take hundreds of years. Imagine a living mountain. Picture to yourself how slowly it must live, compared to even the trees that grow upon it, and you will have some notion of my meaning.

"Physically, then, unless I planned some such act as was actually in my mind, I knew that I was quite safe in facing Ishtaol. Spiritual and mental danger were another matter, but I had prepared myself against that. It is difficult to describe the god to you. It looks like smoothly carven stone, in the amorphous form of a mere lump of dough, resting upon the tessellated floor of its temple. Howard, in his journal, describes a monstrous effigy of the god, but it is my belief that no effigies were ever made, and that he saw, but failed to recognise, nothing less than Ishtaol itself. As I found it, it must have measured some thirty feet across and twenty feet high, in a roughly cone-shaped mound.

"The slick smoothness of its surface made it very difficult to climb to the top, but I did achieve it, and found, as I had expected, no fewer than fifteen globular bulges clustered upon its summit, and two hollows to show where such bulges had been. These, I take it, were left when de Lacy and before him Alhazred took their prizes. Like them, I took mine. I had to use a very special knife indeed, and even so the fluid that spread from the cut actually burned off the fingers of my hand, so that I was close to fainting with the pain. But I had what I sought, and I emerged as you see me.

"It cost me the use of my right hand, but I think it was worthwhile. I did not seek wealth, nor do I want power. It is knowledge that fascinates me, and any man so desperate for knowledge may do as I did. Fourteen remain for those who go properly prepared.

"As you can bear witness, strange things may be seen in the eyes of Ishtaol."