LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

"FOR HEAVEN'S SAKE KEEP OFF," KELSON SHRIEKED (frontispiece)

THE INITIATION

THEY GAZED FASCINATED

THE ROOM FILLED WITH LUMINOUS, STRIPED FIGURES






CHAPTER I

HOW THEY FIRST HEARD OF ATLANTIS


Rain is responsible for a great deal more than the mere growth of
vegetables--it is a controller, if a somewhat capricious controller,
of man's destiny. It was mainly, if not entirely, owing to rain that
the French lost the Battle of Agincourt; whilst, if I mistake not,
Confucius alone knows how many victories have been snatched from the
Chinese by the same factor.

It was most certainly rain that drove Leon Hamar to take refuge in a
second-hand bookshop; for so deep-rooted was his aversion to any
literature saving a financial gazette or the stock and shares column