“In connection with this earthquake terror?” I inquired.
“Yes!” he told me; “for—”
There was a pause, and then he finished in a strange, awed voice:
“What the world has seen of this devil ‘KWO’ is only the faintest prelude to what may come—events so terrible, so utterly opposed to all human experience, that they would stagger the imagination! This is the beginning of the dissolution of our planet!”
CHAPTER III.
THE SORCERERS OF CHINA
“Doubtless you never heard of the Seuen-H’sin.”
The speaker was Dr. Ferdinand Gresham, and these were the first words he had uttered since we entered our private compartment on the midnight express for Washington, an hour before.
I lowered my cigar expectantly.
“No,” I said; “never until you spoke the name in a momentary fit of illness this evening.”
The doctor gave me a swift, searching glance, as if questioning what I might have learned. Presently he went to the door and looked out into the passage, apparently assuring himself no one was within hearing; then, locking the portal, he returned to his seat and said: