"You were frightened?"
"Naturally! So would you have been. It didn't speak, but in some indefinable manner it conveyed to me the purport of its visit. To-night, at twelve o'clock, we are to go to the house of a Hindu, called Karaver, in Berners Street, where we shall be initiated into the second stage of our compact."
"I hope to goodness we shan't see any spectral trees or striped figures—I've had enough of them," Kelson said.
"Then take care you don't do anything that might lead to the breaking of the compact," Hamar retorted, "otherwise you'll see something far worse."
Shortly before midnight, Hamar, Curtis and Kelson, obeying the injunctions Hamar had received, set off to Berners Street, where they had little difficulty in finding Karaver's house.
To their astonishment Karaver was expecting them.
"How did you know we were coming," Curtis asked.
"A gentleman called here early this morning and told me," Karaver explained. "He said three friends of his particularly wished to be on the Astral Plane, at twelve o'clock this evening, and that they would each pay me a hundred guineas, if I would show them how to get there. I demurred. The secrets that have come down to me through generations of my Cashmere ancestors, I tell only to a chosen few—those born under the sign of Dejellum Brava.
"The stranger showing me the sign—written plainer than I have ever seen it—in the palm of his hand, I at once consented, and I had no sooner done so than he vanished. I knew then that I had been speaking to an Elemental—a spirit of my native mountains."
"My nerves are not in a condition to stand much. Is there anything very alarming in this astral business?" Kelson asked.