"I mean it is not complete." Something of the American had vanished from the young man. "It has no clapper. It will not ring." "Why, that's right." Mark Williams took the bell. "The clapper's missing." "We can have another clapper made," his wife declared. "That is, if the original can't be found?" The young Chinese shook his head. "The bell and the clapper were deliberately separated by my father twenty years ago." He hesitated, then added: "My father was afraid of this bell." "Afraid of it?" Mark Williams raised his eyebrows. The other hesitated again. "It will probably sound like a story for tourists," he said. "But my father believed it. This bell was supposedly stolen from the temple of a sect of Buddhists somewhere in the mountains of China's interior. Just as many Occidentals believe that the Christian Judgement Day will be heralded by a blast on St. Peter's trumpet, so this small sect is said to believe that when a bell like this one is rung, a bell carved from a single piece of rose crystal, and consecrated by ceremonies lasting ten years, any dead within sound of it will rise and live again." "Heavenly!" Edith Williams cried. "And no pun intended. Mark, think what a help this bell will be in your practise when we make it ring again!" To the Chinese she added, smiling: "I'm just teasing him. My husband is really a very fine surgeon." The other bowed his head. "I must tell you," he said, "you will not be able to make it ring. Only the original clapper, carved from the same block of rose crystal, will ring it. That is why my father separated them." Again he hesitated. "I have told you only half of what my father told me. He said that, though it defeats death, Death can not be defeated. Robbed of his chosen victim, he takes another in his place. Thus when the bell was used in the temple of its origin--let us say when a high priest or a chief had died--a slave or servant was placed handy for Death to take when he had been forced to relinquish his grasp upon the important one." He smiled, shook his head. "There," he said. "A preposterous story. Now if you wish it, the bell is ten dollars. Plus, of course, sales tax." "The story alone is worth more," Dr. Williams declared. "I think we'd better have it sent, hadn't we, Edith? It'll be safer in the mail than in our suitcase." "Sent?" His wife seemed to come out of some deep feminine meditation. "Oh, of course. And as for its not ringing--I shall make it ring. I know I shall." "If the story is true," Mark Williams murmured, "I hope not...." * * * * * The package came on a Saturday morning, when Mark Williams was catching up on the latest medical publications in his untidy, book-lined study. He heard Edith unwrapping paper in the hall outside. Then she came in with the rose-crystal bell in her hands. "Mark, it's here!" she said. "Now to make it ring." She plumped herself down beside his desk. He took the bell and reached for a silver pencil.