“I am not Blunt’s keeper,” she parried. “I do not know, but”—and at this point an extraordinary light flickered through her dull eyes—“he may have been. I cannot see in the dark.”
“He made an offer for something this afternoon,” said Derrick quietly, “something that seemed of little worth to me.”
She looked at him silently, as though in contempt of his childishness.
He felt in his pocket and leaned forward. “The offer was for the original of this,” he replied, and put the wax image on the desk immediately in front of him.
In the next moment he snatched it away. Perkins, springing with convulsive strength, had laid her nervous grip on the model, her eyes suddenly ablaze with mad cupidity. In a fraction of time she was transfigured into a wild thing dominated by one uncontrollable desire, and her movement had the swiftness of light. Her hands closed like claws, but even as she touched the thing her grip relaxed, for in that instant she knew it was not real. She sent Derrick the same strange look of baffled incredulity he had received from the peddler, then sank back in her chair, trembling and unnerved. Her gaze rested on what lay safe in his grasp, wandered to the picture of her master, and round the paneled walls, searching for what she knew must be somewhere close at hand. The hunger in her eyes slackened, becoming reborn again as though fanned into life by this knowledge, till again she was almost a demon, urged by some driving force, terrible in its power.
Once more the light faded, the tense figure slowly relaxed, the face resumed the sphinx-like character to which he was so well accustomed, and there was before him the former Perkins, silent, mysterious, and remote. She quivered as though from the storm that had passed over her and, with her body limp, waited for what might come.
“Does Martin want the real image, too, like yourself and Blunt?” he asked deliberately.
She remained silent, her lips pressed tight.
“Then what is this thing?”
Even while he spoke there came to him the certain knowledge that in the emerald depths of the hidden figure lay that which passed man’s understanding. Nor could any man tell how this should be. The fact was potent enough, and, as to the rest, it mattered not when or why. The tiny god exemplified something for which there was no explanation. It was absurd to expect Perkins to make one. It rested in the abyss that yawns at the feet of all, whether they see it or not. Sometimes one might touch it in the darkness, only to lose it. The thought of it imposed sudden silence in careless hours and made the lips dry and the blood tingle as it does when we feel on our brows the touch of vanished fingers, and out of nothingness comes the echo of a remembered voice. No, there was no explanation. Perkins spoke after a stinging pause.