The Japanned Box

A tutor arrives at Thorpe Place, an old stone house in the Midlands, to teach the sons of a widowed landowner who was once the most notorious rake in England and now keeps no liquor in the house. Twice a day he locks himself into a round turret room no one else may enter, where a black lacquered box he never travels without waits on a bare table. Late at night, a woman's voice is heard behind that door, pleading.

When a charwoman is dismissed for touching it, the tutor's pity curdles into a conviction that he is serving a hypocrite. Then illness, a narcotic, and an unlucky sleep leave him asleep in the library after dark.