From a silver incense-burner arose a pencilling of blue smoke.
One of the lacquer doors slid noiselessly open and a man entered,
Stuart inhaled sibilantly and clenched his fists.
The new-comer wore a cowled garment of some dark blue material which
enveloped him from head to feet. It possessed oval eye-holes, and
through these apertures gleamed two eyes which looked scarcely like
the eyes of a human being. They were of that brilliant yellow color
sometimes seen in the eyes of tigers, and their most marked and awful
peculiarity was their unblinking regard. They seemed always to be open
to their fullest extent, and Stuart realized with anger that it was
impossible to sustain for long the piercing gaze of Fo-Hi ... for he
knew that he was in the presence of "The Scorpion"!
Walking with a slow and curious dignity, the cowled figure came across
to the table, first closing the lacquer door. Stuart's hands
convulsively clutched the covering of the _diwan_ as the sinister
figure approached. The intolerable gaze of those weird eyes had
awakened a horror, a loathing horror, within him, such as he never
remembered to have experienced in regard to any human being. It was
the sort of horror which the proximity of a poisonous serpent
occasions--or the nearness of a scorpion....
Fo-Hi seated himself at the table.
Absolute silence reigned in the big room, except for the hissing of
the furnace. No sound penetrated from the outer world.
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