I endeavored to rise, but the eyes of the thing watched me evilly, and ordered me to be silent. It seemed angry that I should question its spiritual supremacy. It had uncovered its eyes, but the great loathsome nose remained mercifully concealed by several layers of disintegrating wrappings. It was frightful to watch the thing’s efforts to free itself. It wriggled and squirmed, and in its vileness, it resembled a great fleshy worm endeavoring to escape from some deep sewer of earth.

What followed will always remain confused in my memory. I seem to recall Professor Dewey upon his back with closed eyes, and something standing above him in the dim light like an immemorial avenger. I seem to glimpse a supremely ghastly exterior—two great ears protruding from a narrow and greenish skull, and a great nose like an elephant’s trunk showing briefly in profile.

Then fire—a deluge of colored fire, which shot out of the creature’s nose and mouth, fire from hell, fire from beyond Arcturus. I saw the professor’s eyes open, and I saw him stare at the thing for a moment in triumph. The exultation in his face was quickly replaced by agony and despair. He threw out his arms as if endeavoring to ward off an immediate doom, and while I watched, his face shriveled and blackened.

“I was right,” he shrieked. “The Egyptians did not worship men. God pity my poor soul!”

I did not stay to comfort my stricken friend. I ran shrieking from the room, and out of the house into the street. I looked up to see thick black smoke pouring from an upper window, but I turned in no alarm. I ran wildly across deserted squares and through winding alleys and finally found my way to a leering subway entrance.

I fled insanely down the stairs and climbed over the turnstile without depositing a fare. Luckily no one saw me. In a moment I was in a roaring train, my arms flung about a drunken beggar, and into his astonished ears I poured a tale that made him gasp and shake his head.

“You young ’uns always get it somewhere,” he grimaced. “I wish I had your luck.”

I have always found newspaper men exceedingly prosaic. The following cutting from a New York paper demonstrates my point: