It sounded unnaturally loud in the absolute stillness of the room, and I looked at the adept quickly, but he had not moved.

“Can’t he hear you?” I asked.

“No—­he couldn’t hear a clap of thunder.  That is, unless he’s faking.”

I looked again at the impassive figure.

“He’s not faking,” I said.

“I don’t know,” and Godfrey shook his head sceptically.  “It looks like the real thing—­but these fellows are mighty clever.  Do you see the other victim?  There’s no fake about it!”

“I see no one else,” I said, after a vain scrutiny.

“Look carefully on the other side of the sphere.  Don’t you see something there?”

My eyes were smarting under the strain, and for a moment longer I saw nothing; then a strange, grey shape detached itself from the blackness.  It was an ugly and repulsive shape, slender below, but swelling hideously at the top, and as I stared at it, it seemed to me that it returned my stare with malignant eyes screened by a pair of white-rimmed glasses.  Then, with a sensation of dizziness, I saw that the shape was swaying gently back and forth, in a sort of rhythm.  And then, quite suddenly, I saw what it was, and a chill of horror quivered up my back.

It was a cobra.

To and fro it swung, to and fro, its staring eyes fixed upon the sphere, its spectacled hood hideously distended.

The very soul within me trembled as I gazed at those unwinking eyes.  What did they see in the sphere?  What was passing in that inscrutable brain?  Could it, too, reconstruct the past, read the mysteries of the future ...

Some awful power, greater than my will, seemed stretching its tentacles from the darkness:  I felt them dragging at me, certain, remorseless, growing stronger and stronger ...

With something very like a shriek of terror, I tore myself away, out of the entry, into the hall, to the stairs, and down them into the lighted room below.

And as I stood there, gasping for breath, Godfrey followed me, and I saw that his face, too, was livid.

CHAPTER VIII

A FRESH ENIGMA

Godfrey met my eyes with a little deprecating smile, put his torch in one pocket, took a handkerchief from another, and mopped his forehead.

“Rather nerve-racking, wasn’t it, Lester?” he remarked, and then his gaze wandered to the couch, and he stepped toward it quickly.

I saw that a change had come in Miss Vaughan’s condition.  Her eyes were still closed, but her body no longer lay inert and lifeless, for from moment to moment it was shaken by a severe nervous tremor.  Godfrey’s face was very grave as he looked at her.