“Now I can show you why I want Gloria to send George away. He’s downstairs now, I think,” she was speaking in a low whisper. “I want you to see for yourself. I haven’t dared to tell any one for fear they wouldn’t believe. He’s down there,” she pointed. “Don’t knock or let him know you’re coming—I want you to see everything. Perhaps—I know it sounds a terrible thing to do, but if you could just look through the keyhole—”
She stopped abruptly, seeing Terry’s look of amazement at such a request.
“Believe me—it is better to do that—just look once and you’ll understand.”
She moved toward the rear of the house, tiptoeing noiselessly and beckoning him to follow. At the top of the short flight of steps she stopped again.
“Down there, behind that door,” she whispered.
As one preparing to dispel the foolish fears of a nervous woman, Terry advanced down the steps, yet such was the influence of the hour, the strange incense and Ruth’s manner that he walked softly. Ruth followed him, but at the bottom Terry did not bend down to look through the keyhole. Before Ruth’s frightened eyes he put his hand to the handle of the door, which swung inward at his touch.
A deeper blue haze than that above filled the room into which they looked. In the centre of the room George was kneeling—about his head a white turban was wound and he was wrapped in a long, black robe on which the signs of the zodiac were picked out in gold thread. Before him was placed an altar, which rose in a series of seven steps. At the bottom a lamp was burning with a blue flame, from which the clouds of incense were rising, almost obscuring what lay coiled on the topmost step which spread into a flat platform—an enormous serpent coiled, with its head lifted from the centre of the mass and swaying from side to side, seemingly in accompaniment to a low monotonous chant that George was singing, while he too swayed back and forth, for some moments seeming not to know that the door had been opened. Ruth could not understand the words of the chant, but from the tone they sounded like an invocation. George was praying to his reptile! Suddenly, as if he had just seen them, he lifted his hands and his voice rose, and the snake reared its head far into the air, so that they could see its darting, forked tongue. Then as George’s voice suddenly stopped on a high note the snake subsided again, and George rose to his feet and greeted them.
“Good evening,” he said, “I was just practising my box of tricks. You know I used to be a professional magician and Miss Mayfield has asked me to accompany her to the Christmas party in the country to help entertain the guests of the Peyton-Russells. The snake is quite harmless,” he continued, picking it up on both hands and dropping it over his shoulders. “Would you like to touch it?”
“Oh, no, no,” said Ruth, drawing back and instinctively clutching Terry’s arm. Terry did not accept the invitation either, but to Ruth’s surprise he seemed to accept George’s explanation of the strange scene as truth.
“We were attracted by the smell of the incense,” he explained, “thought it might be fire and we’d better investigate.”