[3] Prologue Four customers buy or steal items from Temptations Limited, an antique shop whose motto is "Offers You Cannot Resist".

The Gatecrasher Edward Charlton buys an antique mirror for a knockdown price, believing that he has tricked the proprietor into accepting that it is a reproduction.

The ritual puts Charlton in contact with a genuine ghost residing in the mirror, who wishes to "feed" on human blood.

The flat is cleared out and rented to new occupants, and years pass without incident until the latest owner also decides to hold a seance.

An Act of Kindness Christopher Lowe is a frustrated middle-management drone, bullied by his wife Mabel and shown no respect by his son.

In Temptations Ltd he sees a Distinguished Service Order medal that would lend credibility to his lie, but the proprietor will not sell it without documentary proof that Lowe was given such an award.

The Elemental Reggie Warren, a businessman, enters Temptations Ltd and puts the price tag of a cheaper snuffbox in the one he wants to buy.

On the train home, a psychic, Madame Orloff, advises Warren that an elemental— a malevolent spirit desperate to break into the corporeal world— has settled on his shoulder.

Seaton's wife Rosemary thinks that the door is too grand for the stationery cupboard where he installs it; when she touches it she has a vision of a sinister blue room.

Inside he reads a manuscript by Sir Michael Sinclair, a seventeenth-century occultist who created the enchanted room with rites involving human sacrifices.

Sinclair himself appears and abducts Rosemary for his latest victim, but Seaton has an inspiration and hits the magic door with an axe.