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"Might I ask, Lord Marcus," the doctor interjected eagerly, "what you sought to do?"

"Certainly." The reply was calm and courteous. "You, very properly, in common with these officers, assume that I am mad. I assure you that I am sane. The ancients, so scorned in this machine age, knew more of the power of the spirit than we to-day even suspect. I have endeavored for more than twenty years to recover some of that lost knowledge. To-night I had sent an untrammelled soul upon a voyage of exploration. I sought to know why the world was so sorely afflicted, and when its punishment would end."

"It is possible that ye mean, sir," said Firth, and he was funereally Caledonian in his dourness, "that ye sought to find out when the war would end?"

"Substantially, perhaps, that was my object. It is vain of you to endeavor to conceal the fact, Chief Inspector, that you regard me as a mental case, and even despise me a little for behavior which you look upon as egregiously flippant at a time of national stress. But you are wrong. I stood, to-night, upon the edge of knowledge denied to men for thousands of years, when, ordained by some fatality which I cannot even pretend to explain, that man died who lies there before us."