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 sanctuary itself, was a small table covered with an embroidered shawl, worked in spangles that glittered and shone, and beneath the table were a number of smooth stones.

Leh Shin locked his hands together and passed up the aisle, close to where the palm trees rustled and stirred, and fear was upon him like that of a hungry dog.  He crossed a line of light cast by some candles, and it seemed to him that the curtains moved as he approached.  The Joss House was apparently empty, and yet it did not seem empty.  Invisible eyes watched behind the carved screens that shut out the priests’ houses on either side, invisible ears might easily catch the lowest whisper of his prayer.  Soundless impressions of moving things that had no shape haunted his consciousness, and he started in panic as his own shadow fell before him when he stepped across the burning candles and slid into the close alley between the table and the shrine.

He bent down suddenly and, feeling on the cold marble of the floor, took up two of the stones and beat them together with the loud clapping noise which proclaimed a suppliant.  Bowed in the close space, he repeated his prayer the requisite number of times, and it seemed to Leh Shin that the Joss heard and accepted:  the Joss who took visible shape in his mind, with a face half-human and half-bestial, and who capered with a drawn sword in his hand.

Over his head the heavy curtains swayed again, and the tittering noise from a nest of bats sounded like ghostly laughter.  His prayer had drawn power to his aid, out of the unknown place where the gods live, and loosed it in response to his cry.  He was only Leh Shin, a poor Chinaman who kept a miserable shop in the native quarter and an opium den down where the river water choked and gurgled at night, but he felt that he had touched something in the terrible shadows, and once more he beat the stones together, his face pouring with sweat.  As the noise echoed up again, the last candle fell dying into a yellow pool of melted wax, and went out with an expiring flicker; and Leh Shin beat his hands against the darkness that shut upon him like a wall.  He sprang to his feet and ran, and as he went wings seemed to bear down behind him.  There was terror alive in the Joss House, and before that terror he fled panting and trembling, fearful that hands would close upon his black garments and drag him back, holding him until he went mad.  As he made for the door he fancied he saw a shadowy form move in the gloom and clear his path, and it added the last touch of panic to his mind.