“What happened that night? Why, my good, kind Friend Trowbridge, who in all his life had done no greater wrong than thoughtlessly to kill a little, so harmless kitten, did almost seemingly commit suicide. But I was not asleep by the switch, my friend. Not Jules de Grandin! All the way home I saw you were distrait, and I did fear something would happen, and I did therefore watch beside your door with my eye and ear alternately glued to the keyhole. Parbleu, I entered the chamber not one little second too soon, either!

“‘This is truly strange,’ I tell me. ‘My friend hears this preacher and nearly destroys himself. Six others have heard him and have quite killed themselves. If Friend Trowbridge were haunted by the ghost of a dead kitten, why should not those others, who also undoubtedly possessed distressing memories, have been hounded to their graves by them?’

“‘There is no reason why they should not,’ I tell me.

“Next, morning comes the summons to attend the young Mademoiselle Weaver. She, too, have heard the preacher; she, too, have attempted her life. And what does she tell us? That she fancied the voice of her dead friend urged her to kill herself.

‘“Ah, ha!’ I say to me. ‘This whatever-it-is which causes so much suicide may appeal by fear, or perhaps by love, or by whatever will most strongly affect thy person who dies by his own hand. We must see this Monsieur Maundy. It is perhaps possible he can tell us much.’

“As yet I can see no light—I am still in darkness—but far ahead I already see the gleam of a promise of information. When we see Monsieur Everard Maundy and he tells us of his experience at that séance so many years ago—parbleu, I see it all, or almost all.

“Now, what was it acted as agent for that aged sorceress’ curse?”

He elevated one shoulder and looked questioningly at me.

“How should I know?” I answered.

“Correct,” he nodded, “how, indeed? Beyond doubt it were a spirit of some sort; what sort we do not know. Perhaps it were the spirit of some unfortunate who had destroyed himself and was earthbound as a consequence. There are such. And, as misery loves company in the proverb, so do these wretched ones seek to lure others to join them in their unhappy state. Or, maybe, it was an Elemental.”

“A what?” I demanded.

“An Elemental—a Neutrarian.”

“What the deuce is that?”

For answer he left the table and entered the library, returning with a small, red leather-bound volume in his hand. “You have read the works of Monsieur Rossetti?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“You recall his poem, Eden Bowers, perhaps?”

“H’m; yes. I’ve read it, but I never could make anything of it.”

“Quite likely,” he agreed, “its meaning is most obscure, but I shall enlighten you. Attendez-moi!”

Thumbing through the thin pages he began reading at random: