For a moment he stood looking into the shadowy corners, then turned again to the case, ran his finger along a row of books until he came to one with the title “India,” pulled it out and opened it under the light.

The book opened quite suddenly and wide, and his eyes fell on the first few lines.  Without a movement he stood staring down at the printed words, reading to the end of the page, then he violently closed the book, thrust it back into the case, and closing the doors, pressed against them with both hands as though in an endeavour to keep back something which was trying to get out.

“No! my God!  No! never! not that—­not that as an end—­not for that baby—­and yet——­”

He moved across to the desk, sank heavily like a very old man into his chair and covered his face with his hands.

Then very slowly and as though against his will he uncovered his face, and leaning forward stared across to the bookcase whilst he groped for the pen beside the book.

“And the cure,” he muttered, “the remedy—­I must find it—­I—­I——­”

His heart was thudding heavily with the merest suspicion of a complete pause between the beats, his hand trembled almost imperceptibly, whilst his eyes glanced questioningly this way and that.

“I don’t understand, I don’t understand!” he whispered, just like a frightened child as he plucked at his collar and moved his head quickly from side to side as though trying to loosen some stranglehold about his neck.

He turned and stared unseeingly into the fire with the look of perplexity deepening on his face, then slowly he raised his eyes, first to the delicate tracings of the Adams mantelpiece, then to the varied ornaments on the shelf.

“Tish!” he said impatiently as they roved from the central figure of benign undisturbed Buddha, to a snake of brass holding a candle, and on to a blatant and grotesque dragon from China.

For a second he stared uncomprehendingly, then raised his head.

Inch by inch his eyes moved until they reached the top shelf of the overmantel and stopped.  A shiver shook him as he lay back in his chair, his widespread fingers clutched at the chair arms, a tiny bead of perspiration showed upon the broad forehead.

Staring down at him, shining evilly in the moonlight, was a glistening, unwavering eye.

Just a slanting mother-o’-pearl eye in the battered head of a god or goddess of India, with features almost obliterated by the passage of centuries.

For a full minute Sir Jonathan sat staring up at the eye which stared back; then moving with a convulsive jerk, ran both hands through the mane of silvery hair as though to lift some crushing load from about his head; and turning sideways in his chair stretched out one hand between the eye above and his own as he clumsily seized the pen in the shaking fingers.

“Ah! my God!” he muttered, “the answer is still there, on the tip of my tongue, before my eyes, within reach of my fingers, and I cannot grasp it—­ah!—­yes——­”