“What are you doing? What's in there?” Rupert asked, looking at the packing-case, his mouth and lips so suddenly dry he found it difficult to speak at all.
Deede Dawson began to laugh, a low and dreadful laughter that had in it no trace of merriment at all, but only of mockery and malice.
It was such laughter as a devil from the nethermost pit might give vent to when he saw at last a good man yield to long temptation.
“What's in there?” Rupert said again, pointing to the packing-case, and it was as though his soul swooned within him for fear of what the answer might be.
“What do the children say?” Deede Dawson returned with his terrible smile. “I'll give you three guesses, isn't it? See if you can guess in three tries.”
“What's in there?” Rupert asked the third time, and Deede Dawson laid down the screw-driver with which he had just driven home the last screw.
“Oh, see for yourself, if you want to,” he said. “But you ought to know. You know what was in the other case I sent away from here, the one I got Ella to take in the car for me? I want you to take this one away now, the sooner it's away the better.”
“That's it, is it?” Rupert muttered.
He no longer doubted, and for a moment all things swam together before him and he felt dizzy and a little sick, and so weak he staggered and nearly fell, but recovered himself in time.
The sensation passed and he saw Deede Dawson as it were a long way off, and between them the packing-case, huge, monstrous, and evil, like a thing of dread from some other world. Violent shudderings swept though him one after the other, and he was aware that Deede Dawson was speaking again.