Now it reached them and paused, and now it rose into the air until it attained the height of Mr.
Champers-Haswell and stayed there, staring into his face and not a hand's breadth away, just as though it were a real woman glaring at him.
He uttered a sound, half whistle and half groan, and fell back, as it chanced on to a morocco-covered seat behind him.

For a moment or two the gleaming, golden mask floated in the air.

Then it turned very deliberately, rose a little way, and moving sidelong to where Sir Robert stood, hung in front of _his_ face.
Presently Aylward staggered to the mantelpiece and began to fumble for the switch; in the silence his nails scratching at the panelling made a sound like to that of a gnawing mouse.

He found it at last, and next instant the office broke into a blaze of light, showing Mr.Haswell, his rubicund face quite pale, his hat and umbrella on the floor, gasping like a dying man upon the couch, and Sir Robert himself clinging to the mantel-shelf as a person might do who had received a mortal wound, while the golden fetish reposed calmly on its pillar, to all appearance as immovable and undisturbed as the antique Venus which matched it at the other end of the room.

For a while there was silence.