"Ha! ha!" laughed the magician, for even as I spoke to Perkins and Tompson
I found myself seated opposite my infernal visitor in my room once more.
"They couldn't keep you an instant with me summoning you back."
His laughter was terrible; his frown was pleasanter; and I felt myself gradually losing control of my senses.
"Go," I cried. "Leave me, or you will have the crime of murder on your conscience."
"I have no con—" he began; but I heard no more.
That is the last I remember of that fearful night. I must have fainted, and then have fallen into a deep slumber.
[Illustration]
When I waked it was morning, and I was alone, but undressed and in bed, unconscionably weak, and surrounded by medicine bottles of many kinds. The clock on the mantle on the other side of the room indicated that it was after ten o'clock.
"Great Beelzebub!" I cried, taking note of the hour. "I've an engagement with Barlow at nine."
And then a sweet-faced woman, who, I afterwards learned, was a professional nurse, entered the room, and within an hour I realized two facts. One was that I had lain ill for many days, and that my engagement with Barlow was now for six weeks unfulfilled; the other, that my midnight visitor was none other than—
And yet I don't know. His tricks certainly were worthy of that individual; but Perkins and Tompson assert that I never entered the club that night, and surely if my visitor was Beelzebub himself he would not have omitted so important a factor of success as my actual presence in the billiard-room on that occasion would have been; and, besides, he was altogether too cool to have come from his reputed residence.