desk.

"Leave me my only economy, Haswell," he answered with a hard little
laugh. "Electricity is strength and I hate to see strength burning to
waste. Why do you mind?" he went on as he stepped towards the door.
"Is it the contrast? In all times of our wealth, in all times of our
tribulation, from sickness and from sudden death----"

"Good Lord deliver us," chimed in Mr. Haswell in a shaking voice behind
him. "What the devil's that?"

Sir Robert looked round and saw, or thought that he saw, something very
strange. From the pillar on which it stood the golden fetish with a
woman's face, appeared to have floated. The firelight showed it gliding
towards them across, but a few inches above the floor of the great room.
It came very slowly, but it came. 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. Then Sir Robert,
recovering himself, asked:

"Did you notice anything unusual just now, Haswell?"

"Yes," whispered his partner. "I thought that hideous African thing
which Vernon brought here, came sliding across the floor and stared into
my face with its glittering eyes, and in the eyes----"

"Well, what was in the eyes?"

"I can't remember. It was a kind of picture and the meaning of it was
Sudden Death--oh Lord! Sudden Death. Tell me it was