forearm appeared to rest in his lap; he moved his pieces with his
right hand, which seemed disproportionately long.

I had shrunk back and now stood a little to one side of the doorway
and in shadow. If Moxon had looked farther than the face of his
opponent he could have observed nothing now, except that the door was
open. Something forbade me either to enter or to retire, a feeling--
I know not how it came--that I was in the presence of an imminent
tragedy and might serve my friend by remaining. With a scarcely
conscious rebellion against the indelicacy of the act I remained.

The play was rapid. Moxon hardly glanced at the board before making
his moves, and to my unskilled eye seemed to move the piece most
convenient to his hand, his motions in doing so being quick, nervous
and lacking in precision. The response of his antagonist, while
equally prompt in the inception, was made with a slow, uniform,
mechanical and, I thought, somewhat theatrical movement of the arm,
that was a sore trial to my patience. There was something unearthly
about it all, and I caught myself shuddering. But I was wet and
cold.

Two or three times after moving a piece the stranger slightly
inclined his head, and each time I observed that Moxon shifted his
king. All at once the thought came to me that the man was dumb. And
then that he was a machine--an automaton chess-player! Then I
remembered that Moxon had once spoken to me of having invented such a
piece of mechanism, though I did not understand that it had actually
been constructed. Was all his talk about the consciousness and
intelligence of machines merely a prelude to eventual exhibition of
this device--only a trick to intensify the effect of its mechanical