“I really do not know,” he said.  “I—­I must have time to think.  Coming across the border that way you must give me time.  You were telling me about the Rhamdas in general; now tell me about Avec in particular.”

Geos nodded as though he could understand the fog that beclouded Watson’s mind.

“The Rhamda Avec is, or was, the wisest of them all; the head and the chief, and by far the most able.  Few beside his own fellows knew it, however; another than he was the nominal head, and officiated for him whenever necessary.  Avec had little social intercourse; he was a prodigious student.

“We are a body of learned men, you understand, and we stand at the peak of all that has been discovered through hundreds upon hundreds of centuries, so that at the present day we are the culmination of the combined effort and thought of man since the beginning of time.  Each generation of Rhamdas must be greater than the one preceding.  When I die and pass on to your world I must leave something new and worth-while to my successor; some thought, wisdom, or deed that may be of use to mankind.  I cannot be a Rhamda else.  We are a set of supreme priests, who serve man at the shrine of intelligence, not of dogma.

“Of course, we are not to be judged too highly.  All research, when it steps forward must go haltingly; there are many paths into the unknown that look like the real one.  Hence, we have among us various schools of thought, and each following a different trail.

“I myself am a spiritist.  I believe that we can, and often have, communicated with your world at various times.  There are others who do not grant it; there are Rhamdas who are inclined to lean more to the materialist’s side of things, who rely entirely, when it comes to questions of this kind, upon their faith in the teachings of the Jarados.  There are some, too, who believe in the value of speculation, and who contend that only through contemplation can man lift himself to the full fruits of realisation.  At the head of us all—­the Rhamda Avec!”

“What was his belief?”

“Let us say he believed all.  He was eclectic.  He held that we were all of us a bit right, and each of us a whole lot wrong.  It was his contention, however, that there was not one thing that could not be proven; that the secret of life, while undoubtedly a secret in every sense of the word, is still very concrete, it could be proven!”

Watson nodded.  He remembered hearing another man make just such a statement—­Dr. Holcomb.

“For years he worked in private,” went on Geos.  “We never knew just what he was doing; until, one day, he called us together and delivered his lecture.”

“His lecture?”

“Rather, his prophecy.  For it was all that.  Not that he spoke at great length; it was but a talk.  He announced that he believed the time had come to prove the occult.  That it could be done, and done only through concrete, material means; and that whatever existed, certainly could be demonstrated.  He was going to pull aside the curtain that had hitherto cut off the shadow.