I shuddered. This, at least, was no drawing-room diablerie.
“It is Ophis,” intoned Rapport, “the Serpent—the one active form in Nature that cannot be ungraceful!”
The appearance of the basilisk seemed to heighten the tension.
At last it broke loose and then followed the most terrible blasphemies. The disciples, now all frenzied, surrounded closer the priest, the gargoyle and the serpent.
They worshiped with howls and obscenities. Mad laughter mingled with pale fear and wild scorn in turns were written on the hectic faces about me.
They had risen—it became a dance, a reel.
The votaries seemed to spin about on their axes, as it were, uttering a low, moaning chant as they whirled. It was a mania, the spirit of demonism. Something unseen seemed to urge them on.
Disgusted and stifled at the surcharged atmosphere, I would have tried to leave, but I seemed frozen to the spot. I could think of nothing except Poe’s Masque of the Red Death.
Above all the rest whirled Seward Blair himself. The laugh of the fiend, for the moment, was in his mouth. An instant he stood—the oracle of the Demon—devil-possessed. Around whirled the frantic devotees, howling.
Shrilly he cried, “The Devil is in me!”