This proceeding brought a flash of real anger into Jason’s eyes. He snatched the thing away with a nervous clutch, and, hurrying to the back of the room, replaced it on its jade pedestal, which Wolf noticed now, with no great surprise, was standing near a carved brazier containing some still-smouldering ashes⁠—doubtless the ashes of that very incense which had to be “ordered from the Stores”!

While his host returned in silence to his French chair and in profound dejection took out his cigarette-case, Wolf, still staring in a sort of hypnotized trance at the “god of rain,” set himself to wonder why it was that the kind of evil which emanated from this idol should be so much more distasteful than the kind of evil that emanated from Mr. Urquhart.