the thin walls in sheets. The drumming upon the shingle roof
spanning the unceiled room was loud and incessant.

I had never been invited into the machine-shop--had, indeed, been
denied admittance, as had all others, with one exception, a skilled
metal worker, of whom no one knew anything except that his name was
Haley and his habit silence. But in my spiritual exaltation,
discretion and civility were alike forgotten and I opened the door.
What I saw took all philosophical speculation out of me in short
order.

Moxon sat facing me at the farther side of a small table upon which a
single candle made all the light that was in the room. Opposite him,
his back toward me, sat another person. On the table between the two
was a chessboard; the men were playing. I knew little of chess, but
as only a few pieces were on the board it was obvious that the game
was near its close. Moxon was intensely interested--not so much, it
seemed to me, in the game as in his antagonist, upon whom he had
fixed so intent a look that, standing though I did directly in the
line of his vision, I was altogether unobserved. His face was
ghastly white, and his eyes glittered like diamonds. Of his
antagonist I had only a back view, but that was sufficient; I should
not have cared to see his face.

He was apparently not more than five feet in height, with proportions
suggesting those of a gorilla--a tremendous breadth of shoulders,
thick, short neck and broad, squat head, which had a tangled growth
of black hair and was topped with a crimson fez. A tunic of the same
color, belted tightly to the waist, reached the seat--apparently a
box--upon which he sat; his legs and feet were not seen. His left