I looked again at the impassive figure.

"He's not faking," I said.

"I don't know," and Godfrey shook his head sceptically. "It looks like
the real thing--but these fellows are mighty clever. Do you see the
other victim? There's no fake about it!"

"I see no one else," I said, after a vain scrutiny.

"Look carefully on the other side of the sphere. Don't you see
something there?"

My eyes were smarting under the strain, and for a moment longer I saw
nothing; then a strange, grey shape detached itself from the
blackness. It was an ugly and repulsive shape, slender below, but
swelling hideously at the top, and as I stared at it, it seemed to me
that it returned my stare with malignant eyes screened by a pair of
white-rimmed glasses. Then, with a sensation of dizziness, I saw that
the shape was swaying gently back and forth, in a sort of rhythm. And
then, quite suddenly, I saw what it was, and a chill of horror
quivered up my back.

It was a cobra.

To and fro it swung, to and fro, its staring eyes fixed upon the
sphere, its spectacled hood hideously distended.

The very soul within me trembled as I gazed at those unwinking eyes.
What did they see in the sphere? What was passing in that inscrutable