He was now ready; and--so was pussy.

"That paves the way for test six," Hamar observed; "no one can say I
am a waster--I make use of everything--and every one;" and so saying
he tumbled the cat into the sack and hurried out.

Some half-hour later he had returned to his room, and was busily
engaged making preparations for test three. Letting a drop of Curtis's
blood fall on the skull, he put the latter under his pillow, and
retired to rest. He had slept for little over an hour, when he awoke
with a start. The muffled sound of hammering--as of nails in a
coffin--was going on all around him, and occasionally it seemed to him
that something big and heavy stalked across the floor; but in spite of
the fact that the room was illuminated with a red glow--the same lurid
red as had appeared in tests one and two--nothing was to be seen. The
phenomena lasted five or six minutes and then everything was again
normal. Hamar was so terrified that he lay with his head under the
bedclothes till morning, and vowed nothing on earth would persuade him
to sleep in that room again. But sunlight soon restored his courage,
and by the evening he was quite eager to go on with the next test. He
had some difficulty in persuading any one to allow him the use of an
oven for so pernicious a mixture as nightshade and hemlock; but at
last he over-ruled the objections of some good-natured woman--the
mother of one of the office boys at his former employer's--and test
four proved as successful as the previous three. The preliminary part
of test five was also successfully accomplished; but in carrying out
the second part of it, Hamar all but met with disaster. He was walking
along Kearney Street with the specially prepared hazel twig carefully
concealed beneath his coat, when just opposite Saddler's jewelry