Page:Peter Whiffle (1922).djvu/235

. . . and eventually we shall pay the price. . ..

Like Faust?

Like Faust. . . that is, if we are not clever enough to outwit the demon. Those who practise devilments usually find some means to circumvent the devil.

I appeared to ponder.

I am willing to go through with it, I said at last.

Good! I knew you would be. Let's get to work at once!

He lifted the most ponderous volume in the laboratory from the floor to the top of an old walnut refectory table. The book was bound in musty yellow vellum, clasped with iron, and the foxed leaves were fashioned from parchment made from the skin of virgin camels. As he opened it, I saw that the pages were inscribed with cabalistic characters and symbols, illuminated in colours, none of which I could decipher. Lou Matagot jumped on to the table and sat on the leaves at the top of the book, forming a paper weight. He sat with his back to Peter and his long, black tail played nervously up and down the centre of the volume.

Peter now drew a circle with a radius of twelve or thirteen feet around us, inscribing within its circumference certain characters and pentacles. Then he plunged a dagger through what I recognized to be a sacred wafer, which he told me had been stolen from a church at midnight, at the same time, muttering what, from the tone of his voice, I took to be