She took the curious little box and unfastened the cover. As she opened it, she drew back. There in the box was a little ivory figure of a man, all hunched up and shrunken, a hideous figure. She recoiled from it—it reminded her too much of the Chinese devil-god she had seen,—and she dropped the box.
For a moment all stood looking at it in horrified amazement.
. . . . . . .
It was the afternoon following the day of our strange discovery of the fireplace done in sympathetic ink on the apparently blank sheet of paper in Bennett's effects, when the speaking-tube sounded and I answered it.
"Why—it's Elaine," I exclaimed.
Kennedy's face showed the keenest pleasure at the unexpected visit.
"Tell her to come right up," he said quickly.
I opened the door for her.
"Why—Elaine—I'm awfully glad to see you," he greeted, "but I thought you were rusticating."
"I was, but, Craig, it seems to me that wherever I go, something happens," she returned. "You know, Aunt Tabby said there were haunts. I thought it was an old woman's fear—but last night I heard the strangest noises out there, and I thought I saw a face at the window—a face in a helmet. And when Joshua went out, this is what he found on the ground under my window."
She handed Kennedy a box, a peculiar affair which she touched gingerly and only with signs of the greatest aversion.