“What is wrong?” asked Mr. Paine.
“Why, look at that!”
There, sitting, as it were, bolt upright on my knee was the something which had been in the scrap of paper. Mr. Paine eyed it.
“What is it?”
“That’s what I should like to know; also where it’s come from; it wasn’t there a moment back, and that I’ll swear.”
“May I look at it?”
“Certainly; and throw it out of the window too, for all I care.”
Mr. Paine took it up. He turned it over and over.
“It looks like one of the images, representatives of well known deities, which are used as household gods on some of the Pacific coasts. People hang them over their beds, or over the thresholds of their doors, or anywhere. Imitations are sold in some of the London shops. Perhaps Messrs. Cardew & Slaughter keep them in stock.”
“That I am sure they don’t. And, if they do, that’s not out of their stock. That was given to me last night by a foreigner in yellow canvas cloth. It jumped out of the scrap of paper in which it was wrapped——”