"Let us sit round the table and talk," said Madame Riennes.
Thereon the whole party moved into the recess where was the flower-pot that has been mentioned, which Miss Ogilvy took away.
They seated themselves round the little table upon which it had stood. Godfrey, lingering behind, found, whether by design or accident, that the only place left for him was the arm-chair which he hesitated to occupy.
"Be seated, young Monsieur," said the formidable Madame in bell-like tones, whereon he collapsed into the chair. "Sister Helen," she went on, "draw the curtain, it is more private so; yes, and the blind that there may be no unholy glare."
Miss Ogilvy, who seemed to be entirely under Madame's thumb, obeyed. Now to all intents and purposes they were in a tiny, shadowed room cut off from the main apartment.
"Take that talisman from your neck and give it to young Monsieur Knight," commanded Madame.
"But I gave it to her, and do not want it back," ventured Godfrey, who was growing alarmed.
"Do what I say," she said sternly, and he found himself holding the relic.
"Now, young Monsieur, look me in the eyes a little and listen. I request of you that holding that black, engraved stone in your hand, you will be so good as to throw your soul, do you understand, your soul, back, back, back and tell us where it come from, who have it, what part it play in their life, and everything about it."
"How am I to know?" asked Godfrey, with indignation.
Then suddenly everything before him faded, and he saw himself standing in a desert by a lump of black rock, at which a brown man clad only in a waist cloth and a kind of peaked straw hat, was striking with an instrument that seemed to be half chisel and half hammer, fashioned apparently from bronze, or perhaps of greenish-coloured flint. Presently the brown man, who had a squint in one eye and a hurt toe that was bound round with something, picked up a piece of the black rock that he had knocked off, and surveyed it with evident satisfaction. Then the scene vanished.
Godfrey told it with interest to the audience who were apparently also interested.
"The finding of the stone," said Madame. "Continue, young Monsieur."
Another vision rose before Godfrey's mind. He beheld a low room having a kind of verandah, roofed with reeds, and beyond it a little courtyard enclosed by a wall of grey-coloured mud bricks, out of some of which stuck pieces of straw. This courtyard opened onto a narrow street where many oddly-clothed people walked up and down, some of whom wore peaked caps. A little man, old and grey, sat with the fragment of black rock on a low table before him, which Godfrey knew to be the same stone that he had already seen. By him lay graving tools, and he was engaged in polishing the stone, now covered with figures and writing, by help of a stick, a piece of rough cloth and oil. A young man with a curly beard walked into the little courtyard, and to him the old fellow delivered the engraved stone with obeisances, receiving payment in some curious currency.