and punishing the smallest neglect with the utmost rigour. He could
appeal to a great invisible cruel brain and demand assistance for his
own limited desire for revenge, knowing that it was an attribute of
those whose help he sought, but he went in fear, with pricking nerves,
because his belief was strong in the power of the monsters he
worshipped.

The Joss House stood in a wide street near the river; a stone courtyard
separated it from the thoroughfare, and the building itself was raised
on a terrace, led up to by two shallow flights of steps. The roof was a
marvel of sea-green mosaic, coiled over by dragons with flaming red
tongues and staring glass eyes, each dragon a wonder of fretted fins and
ivory teeth and claws. Upon each of the three roofs was set relief
mosaic, of beautiful workmanship, representing houses and ships and
bridges, with tiny men and women, and little trees, all as small as a
child's plaything, but complete, proportioned and entire. Huge stone
pillars covered with devils and crawling lizards supported the long
portico that ran the full length of the building, and between each
pillar an immense paper lantern gleamed like a dim moon.

Leh Shin stood outside for a few moments and then plunged in, like a man
who is not sure of his nerve and cannot afford to wait too long lest his
determination to face what lay inside should fail him. On feast days the
Joss House was a gay place, full of lights and people crowding in and
out, and there was no room for fear, for even a Joss is not alarming in
company with many men, but when Leh Shin went in, the place was
deserted, and it seemed to him that the unseen power was terribly near
in the darkness.

It was a vast, lofty building inside, supported by gold pillars and
black pillars, and in the centre near the door was a tank-shaped well
where pots of flowering plants and palms were set with no particular eye
to regularity or effect. As they shivered and rustled in the dark, they
were full of a suggestion of the fear that made Leh Shin's heart as cold
as a stone in a deep pool. Raised on a jade plinth, a low round pillar
stood directly in front of the rose-red curtains that were drawn across
the sanctuary space, and on the top of the pillar a bronze jar held one
scented stick, that burned slowly, like a winking, drowsy eye, its slow
spiral of incense creeping up into the air and losing itself in the high
arches of the pointed roof. Between the pillar and the s