The tale concerns the relationship between Stephen Jones and George Rogers, the owner of a private wax museum specialising in the grotesque. Initially cordial, it degenerates as Jones first mocks Rogers then comes to suspect that he is demented with his “wild tales and suggestions of rites and sacrifices to nameless elder gods”. Jones takes up Rogers's standing offer to spend a night in the museum. Locked up for the night, a man will discover the difference between waxen grotesqueries and the real thing.
