along. Then he began promising me things, not in words but by doing them.”

He was interrupted by a word from the Professor, “How?”

“By making them happen. Just as he used to send in the flies when the sun was shining. Great big fat ones with steel and sapphire on their wings. And big moths, in the night, with skull and cross-bones on their backs.”

Van Helsing nodded to him as he whispered to me unconsciously, “The Acherontia Atropos of the Sphinges, what you call the `Death's-head Moth'?”

The patient went on without stopping, “Then he began to whisper.`Rats, rats, rats! Hundreds, thousands, millions of them, and every one a life. And dogs to eat them, and cats too.