I
Adventures come to the adventurous, and mysterious
things fall in the way of those who, with wonder and imagination,
are on the watch for them; but the majority of people go past the
doors that are half ajar, thinking them closed, and fail to notice the
faint stirrings of the great curtain that hangs ever in the form of appearances
between them and the world of causes behind.
For only to the few whose inner senses have been quickened,
perchance by some strange suffering in the depths, or by a natural
temperament bequeathed from a remote past, comes the knowledge,
not too welcome, that this greater world lies ever at their elbow,
and that any moment a chance combination of moods and
forces may invite them to cross the shifting frontier.
Some, however, are born with this awful certainty in their hearts,
and are called to no apprenticeship, and to this select company
Jones undoubtedly belonged.
All his life he had realised that his senses brought to him merely
a more or less interesting set of sham appearances; that space, as
men measure it, was utterly misleading; that time, as the clock
ticked it in a succession of minutes, was arbitrary nonsense; and, in
fact, that all his sensory perceptions were but a clumsy representation
of real things behind the curtain—things he was for ever trying
to get at, and that sometimes he actually did get at.
He had always been tremblingly aware that he stood on the borderland
of another region, a region where time and space were merely
forms of thought, where ancient memories lay open to the sight,
and where the forces behind each human life stood plainly revealed
and he could see the hidden springs at the very heart of the world.
Moreover, the fact that he was a clerk in a fire insurance office, and
did his work with strict attention, never allowed him to forget for
one moment that, just beyond the dingy brick walls where the hundred
men scribbled with pointed pens beneath the electric lamps,
there existed this glorious region where the important part of himself
dwelt and moved and had its being. For in this region he
pictured himself playing the part of a spectator to his ordinary
workaday life, watching, like a king, the stream of events, but untouched
in his own soul by the dirt, the noise, and the vulgar commotion
of the outer world.
And this was no poetic dream merely. Jones was not playing
prettily with idealism to amuse himself. It was a living, working belief.
So convinced was he that the external world was the result of a
vast deception practised upon him by the gross senses, that when he
stared at a great building like St. Paul's he felt it would not very
much surprise him to see it suddenly quiver like a shape of jelly and
then melt utterly away, while in its place stood all at once revealed
the mass of colour, or the great intricate vibrations, or the splendid
sound—the spiritual idea—which it represented in stone.
For something in this way it was that his mind worked.
Yet, to all appearances, and in the satisfaction of all business
claims, Jones was normal and unenterprising. He felt nothing but
contempt for the wave of modern psychism. He hardly knew the
meaning of such words as "clairvoyance" and "clairaudience." He
had never felt the least desire to join the Theosophical Society and
to speculate in theories of astral-plane life, or elementals. He attended
no meetings of the Psychical Research Society, and knew no
anxiety as to whether his "aura" was black or blue; nor was he conscious
of the slightest wish to mix in with the revival of cheap occultism
which proves so attractive to weak minds of mystical
tendencies and unleashed imaginations.
There were certain things he knew, but none he cared to argue
about; and he shrank instinctively from attempting to put names to
the contents of this other region, knowing well that such names
could only limit and define things that, according to any standards
in use in the ordinary world, were simply undefinable and illusive.
So that, although this was the way his mind worked, there was
clearly a very strong leaven of common sense in Jones. In a word,
the man the world and the office knew as Jones was Jones. The
name summed him up and labelled him correctly—John Enderby
Jones.
Among the things that he knew, and therefore never cared to
speak or speculate about, one was that he plainly saw himself as the
inheritor of a long series of past lives, the net result of painful evolution,
always as himself, of course, but in numerous different bodies
each determined by the behaviour of the preceding one. The
present John Jones was the last result to date of all the previous
thinking, feeling, and doing of John Jones in earlier bodies and in
other centuries. He pretended to no details, nor claimed distinguished
ancestry, for he realised his past must have been utterly
commonplace and insignificant to have produced his present; but he
was just as sure he had been at this weary game for ages as that he
breathed, and it never occurred to him to argue, to doubt, or to ask
questions. And one result of this belief was that his thoughts dwelt
upon the past rather than upon the future; that he read much history,
and felt specially drawn to certain periods whose spirit he understood
instinctively as though he had lived in them; and that he
found all religions uninteresting because, almost without exception,
they start from the present and speculate ahead as to what men shall
become, instead of looking back and speculating why men have got
here as they are.
In the insurance office he did his work exceedingly well, but
without much personal ambition. Men and women he regarded as
the impersonal instruments for inflicting upon him the pain or
pleasure he had earned by his past workings, for chance had no
place in his scheme of things at all; and while he recognised that the
practical world could not get along unless every man did his work
thoroughly and conscientiously, he took no interest in the accumulation
of fame or money for himself, and simply, therefore, did his
plain duty, with indifference as to results.
In common with others who lead a strictly impersonal life, he
possessed the quality of utter bravery, and was always ready to face
any combination of circumstances, no matter how terrible, because
he saw in them the just working-out of past causes he had himself
set in motion which could not be dodged or modified. And whereas
the majority of people had little meaning for him, either by way of
attraction or repulsion, the moment he met some one with whom
he felt his past had been vitally interwoven his whole inner being
leapt up instantly and shouted the fact in his face, and he regulated
his life with the utmost skill and caution, like a sentry on watch for
an enemy whose feet could already be heard approaching.
Thus, while the great majority of men and women left him
uninfluenced—since he regarded them as so many souls merely
passing with him along the great stream of evolution—there were,
here and there, individuals with whom he recognised that his smallest
intercourse was of the gravest importance. These were persons
with whom he knew in every fibre of his being he had accounts to
settle, pleasant or otherwise, arising out of dealings in past lives; and
into his relations with these few, therefore, he concentrated as it
were the efforts that most people spread over their intercourse with
a far greater number. By what means he picked out these few individuals
only those conversant with the startling processes of the
subconscious memory may say, but the point was that Jones believed
the main purpose, if not quite the entire purpose, of his present
incarnation lay in his faithful and thorough settling of these
accounts, and that if he sought to evade the least detail of such settling,
no matter how unpleasant, he would have lived in vain, and
would return to his next incarnation with this added duty to perform.
For according to his beliefs there was no Chance, and could
be no ultimate shirking, and to avoid a problem was merely to
waste time and lose opportunities for development.
And there was one individual with whom Jones had long understood
clearly he had a very large account to settle, and towards the
accomplishment of which all the main currents of his being seemed
to bear him with unswerving purpose. For, when he first entered
the insurance office as a junior clerk ten years before, and through a
glass door had caught sight of this man seated in an inner room, one
of his sudden overwhelming flashes of intuitive memory had burst
up into him from the depths, and he had seen, as in a flame of blinding
light, a symbolical picture of the future rising out of a dreadful
past, and he had, without any act of definite volition, marked down
this man for a real account to be settled.
"With that man I shall have much to do," he said to himself, as
he noted the big face look up and meet his eye through the glass.
"There is something I cannot shirk—a vital relation out of the past
of both of us."
And he went to his desk trembling a little, and with shaking
knees, as though the memory of some terrible pain had suddenly
laid its icy hand upon his heart and touched the scar of a great horror.
It was a moment of genuine terror when their eyes had met
through the glass door, and he was conscious of an inward shrinking
and loathing that seized upon him with great violence and convinced
him in a single second that the settling of this account would
be almost, perhaps, more than he could manage.
The vision passed as swiftly as it came, dropping back again into
the submerged region of his consciousness; but he never forgot it,
and the whole of his life thereafter became a sort of natural though
undeliberate preparation for the fulfilment of the great duty when
the time should be ripe.
In those days—ten years ago—this man was the Assistant Manager,
but had since been promoted as Manager to one of the company's
local branches; and soon afterwards Jones had likewise
found himself transferred to this same branch. A little later, again,
the branch at Liverpool, one of the most important, had been in
peril owing to mismanagement and defalcation, and the man had
gone to take charge of it, and again, by mere chance apparently,
Jones had been promoted to the same place. And this pursuit of the
Assistant Manager had continued for several years, often, too, in the
most curious fashion; and though Jones had never exchanged a single
word with him, or been so much as noticed indeed by the great
man, the clerk understood perfectly well that these moves in the
game were all part of a definite purpose. Never for one moment did
he doubt that the Invisibles behind the veil were slowly and surely
arranging the details of it all so as to lead up suitably to the climax
demanded by justice, a climax in which himself and the Manager
would play the leading rôles.
"It is inevitable," he said to himself, "and I feel it may be terrible;
but when the moment comes I shall be ready, and I pray God that I
may face it properly and act like a man."
Moreover, as the years passed, and nothing happened, he felt the
horror closing in upon him with steady increase, for the fact was
Jones hated and loathed the Manager with an intensity of feeling he
had never before experienced towards any human being. He shrank
from his presence, and from the glance of his eyes, as though he remembered
to have suffered nameless cruelties at his hands; and he
slowly began to realise, moreover, that the matter to be settled between
them was one of very ancient standing, and that the nature of
the settlement was a discharge of accumulated punishment which
would probably be very dreadful in the manner of its fulfilment.
When, therefore, the chief cashier one day informed him that the
man was to be in London again—this time as General Manager of
the head office—and said that he was charged to find a private secretary
for him from among the best clerks, and further intimated
that the selection had fallen upon himself, Jones accepted the
promotion quietly, fatalistically, yet with a degree of inward
loathing hardly to be described. For he saw in this merely another
move in the evolution of the inevitable Nemesis which he simply
dared not seek to frustrate by any personal consideration; and at the
same time he was conscious of a certain feeling of relief that the suspense
of waiting might soon be mitigated. A secret sense of satisfaction,
therefore, accompanied the unpleasant change, and Jones was
able to hold himself perfectly well in hand when it was carried into
effect and he was formally introduced as private secretary to the
General Manager.
Now the Manager was a large, fat man, with a very red face and
bags beneath his eyes. Being short-sighted, he wore glasses that
seemed to magnify his eyes, which were always a little bloodshot.
In hot weather a sort of thin slime covered his cheeks, for he perspired
easily. His head was almost entirely bald, and over his turn-down
collar his great neck folded in two distinct reddish collops of
flesh. His hands were big and his fingers almost massive in thickness.
He was an excellent business man, of sane judgment and firm
will, without enough imagination to confuse his course of action by
showing him possible alternatives; and his integrity and ability
caused him to be held in universal respect by the world of business
and finance. In the important regions of a man's character, however,
and at heart, he was coarse, brutal almost to savagery, without consideration
for others, and as a result often cruelly unjust to his helpless
subordinates.
In moments of temper, which were not infrequent, his face
turned a dull purple, while the top of his bald head shone by contrast
like white marble, and the bags under his eyes swelled till it
seemed they would presently explode with a pop. And at these
times he presented a distinctly repulsive appearance.
But to a private secretary like Jones, who did his duty regardless
of whether his employer was beast or angel, and whose mainspring
was principle and not emotion, this made little difference. Within
the narrow limits in which any one could satisfy such a man, he
pleased the General Manager; and more than once his piercing intuitive
faculty, amounting almost to clairvoyance, assisted the chief in
a fashion that served to bring the two closer together than might
otherwise have been the case, and caused the man to respect in his
assistant a power of which he possessed not even the germ himself.
It was a curious relationship that grew up between the two, and the
cashier, who enjoyed the credit of having made the selection, profited
by it indirectly as much as any one else.
So for some time the work of the office continued normally and
very prosperously. John Enderby Jones received a good salary, and
in the outward appearance of the two chief characters in this history
there was little change noticeable, except that the Manager grew fatter
and redder, and the secretary observed that his own hair was beginning
to show rather greyish at the temples.
There were, however, two changes in progress, and they both
had to do with Jones, and are important to mention.
One was that he began to dream evilly. In the region of deep
sleep, where the possibility of significant dreaming first develops itself,
he was tormented more and more with vivid scenes and pictures
in which a tall thin man, dark and sinister of countenance, and
with bad eyes, was closely associated with himself. Only the setting
was that of a past age, with costumes of centuries gone by, and the
scenes had to do with dreadful cruelties that could not belong to
modern life as he knew it.
The other change was also significant, but is not so easy to describe,
for he had in fact become aware that some new portion
of himself, hitherto unawakened, had stirred slowly into life out
of the very depths of his consciousness. This new part of himself
amounted almost to another personality, and he never observed its
least manifestation without a strange thrill at his heart.
For he understood that it had begun to watch the Manager!
II
It was the habit of Jones, since he was compelled to work among
conditions that were utterly distasteful, to withdraw his mind
wholly from business once the day was over. During office hours he
kept the strictest possible watch upon himself, and turned the key
on all inner dreams, lest any sudden uprush from the deeps should
interfere with his duty. But, once the working day was over, the
gates flew open, and he began to enjoy himself.
He read no modern books on the subjects that interested him,
and, as already said, he followed no course of training, nor belonged
to any society that dabbled with half-told mysteries; but,
once released from the office desk in the Manager's room, he simply
and naturally entered the other region, because he was an old inhabitant,
a rightful denizen, and because he belonged there. It was,
in fact, really a case of dual personality; and a carefully drawn
agreement existed between Jones-of-the-fire-insurance-office and
Jones-of-the-mysteries, by the terms of which, under heavy penalties,
neither region claimed him out of hours.
For the moment he reached his rooms under the roof in Bloomsbury,
and had changed his city coat to another, the iron doors of the
office clanged far behind him, and in front, before his very eyes,
rolled up the beautiful gates of ivory, and he entered into the places
of flowers and singing and wonderful veiled forms. Sometimes he
quite lost touch with the outer world, forgetting to eat his dinner or
go to bed, and lay in a state of trance, his consciousness working far
out of the body. And on other occasions he walked the streets on
air, half-way between the two regions, unable to distinguish between
incarnate and discarnate forms, and not very far, probably,
beyond the strata where poets, saints, and the greatest artists have
moved and thought and found their inspiration. But this was only
when some insistent bodily claim prevented his full release, and
more often than not he was entirely independent of his physical
portion and free of the real region, without let or hindrance.
One evening he reached home utterly exhausted after the burden
of the day's work. The Manager had been more than usually brutal,
unjust, ill-tempered, and Jones had been almost persuaded out of
his settled policy of contempt into answering back. Everything
seemed to have gone amiss, and the man's coarse, underbred nature
had been in the ascendant all day long: he had thumped the desk
with his great fists, abused, found fault unreasonably, uttered outrageous
things, and behaved generally as he actually was—beneath
the thin veneer of acquired business varnish. He had done and said
everything to wound all that was woundable in an ordinary secretary,
and though Jones fortunately dwelt in a region from which he
looked down upon such a man as he might look down on the blundering
of a savage animal, the strain had nevertheless told severely
upon him, and he reached home wondering for the first time in his
life whether there was perhaps a point beyond which he would be
unable to restrain himself any longer.
For something out of the usual had happened. At the close of a
passage of great stress between the two, every nerve in the secretary's
body tingling from undeserved abuse, the Manager had suddenly
turned full upon him, in the corner of the private room where
the safes stood, in such a way that the glare of his red eyes, magnified
by the glasses, looked straight into his own. And at this very
second that other personality in Jones—the one that was ever
watching—rose up swiftly from the deeps within and held a mirror
to his face.
A moment of flame and vision rushed over him, and for one single
second—one merciless second of clear sight—he saw the Manager
as the tall dark man of his evil dreams, and the knowledge that
he had suffered at his hands some awful injury in the past crashed
through his mind like the report of a cannon.
It all flashed upon him and was gone, changing him from fire to
ice, and then back again to fire; and he left the office with the certain
conviction in his heart that the time for his final settlement with
the man, the time for the inevitable retribution, was at last drawing
very near.
According to his invariable custom, however, he succeeded in
putting the memory of all this unpleasantness out of his mind with
the changing of his office coat, and after dozing a little in his leather
chair before the fire, he started out as usual for dinner in the Soho
French restaurant, and began to dream himself away into the region
of flowers and singing, and to commune with the Invisibles that
were the very sources of his real life and being.
For it was in this way that his mind worked, and the habits of
years had crystallised into rigid lines along which it was now necessary
and inevitable for him to act.
At the door of the little restaurant he stopped short, a half-remembered
appointment in his mind. He had made an engagement
with some one, but where, or with whom, had entirely slipped his
memory. He thought it was for dinner, or else to meet just after dinner,
and for a second it came back to him that it had something to
do with the office, but, whatever it was, he was quite unable to recall
it, and a reference to his pocket engagement book showed only
a blank page. Evidently he had even omitted to enter it; and after
standing a moment vainly trying to recall either the time, place, or
person, he went in and sat down.
But though the details had escaped him, his subconscious memory
seemed to know all about it, for he experienced a sudden sinking
of the heart, accompanied by a sense of foreboding anticipation,
and felt that beneath his exhaustion there lay a centre of tremendous
excitement. The emotion caused by the engagement was at
work, and would presently cause the actual details of the appointment
to reappear.
Inside the restaurant the feeling increased, instead of passing:
some one was waiting for him somewhere—some one whom he had
definitely arranged to meet. He was expected by a person that very
night and just about that very time. But by whom? Where? A curious
inner trembling came over him, and he made a strong effort to
hold himself in hand and to be ready for anything that might come.
And then suddenly came the knowledge that the place of appointment
was this very restaurant, and, further, that the person he
had promised to meet was already here, waiting somewhere quite
close beside him.
He looked up nervously and began to examine the faces round
him. The majority of the diners were Frenchmen, chattering loudly
with much gesticulation and laughter; and there was a fair sprinkling
of clerks like himself who came because the prices were low
and the food good, but there was no single face that he recognised
until his glance fell upon the occupant of the corner seat opposite,
generally filled by himself.
"There's the man who's waiting for me!" thought Jones instantly.
He knew it at once. The man, he saw, was sitting well back into
the corner, with a thick overcoat buttoned tightly up to the chin.
His skin was very white, and a heavy black beard grew far up over
his cheeks. At first the secretary took him for a stranger, but when
he looked up and their eyes met, a sense of familiarity flashed across
him, and for a second or two Jones imagined he was staring at a
man he had known years before. For, barring the beard, it was the
face of an elderly clerk who had occupied the next desk to his own
when he first entered the service of the insurance company, and had
shown him the most painstaking kindness and sympathy in the
early difficulties of his work. But a moment later the illusion
passed, for he remembered that Thorpe had been dead at least five
years. The similarity of the eyes was obviously a mere suggestive
trick of memory.
The two men stared at one another for several seconds, and then
Jones began to act instinctively, and because he had to. He crossed
over and took the vacant seat at the other's table, facing him; for he
felt it was somehow imperative to explain why he was late, and how
it was he had almost forgotten the engagement altogether.
No honest excuse, however, came to his assistance, though his
mind had begun to work furiously.
"Yes, you are late," said the man quietly, before he could find a
single word to utter. "But it doesn't matter. Also, you had forgotten
the appointment, but that makes no difference either."
"I knew—that there was an engagement," Jones stammered,
passing his hand over his forehead; "but somehow—"
"You will recall it presently," continued the other in a gentle
voice, and smiling a little. "It was in deep sleep last night we arranged
this, and the unpleasant occurrences of to-day have for the
moment obliterated it."
A faint memory stirred within him as the man spoke, and a grove
of trees with moving forms hovered before his eyes and then vanished
again, while for an instant the stranger seemed to be capable
of self-distortion and to have assumed vast proportions, with wonderful
flaming eyes.
"Oh!" he gasped. "It was there—in the other region?"
"Of course," said the other, with a smile that illumined his whole
face. "You will remember presently, all in good time, and meanwhile
you have no cause to feel afraid."
There was a wonderful soothing quality in the man's voice, like
the whispering of a great wind, and the clerk felt calmer at once.
They sat a little while longer, but he could not remember that they
talked much or ate anything. He only recalled afterwards that the
head waiter came up and whispered something in his ear, and that
he glanced round and saw the other people were looking at him curiously,
some of them laughing, and that his companion then got up
and led the way out of the restaurant.
They walked hurriedly through the streets, neither of them
speaking; and Jones was so intent upon getting back the whole history
of the affair from the region of deep sleep, that he barely noticed
the way they took. Yet it was clear he knew where they were
bound for just as well as his companion, for he crossed the streets
often ahead of him, diving down alleys without hesitation, and the
other followed always without correction.
The pavements were very full, and the usual night crowds of
London were surging to and fro in the glare of the shop lights, but
somehow no one impeded their rapid movements, and they seemed
to pass through the people as if they were smoke. And, as they
went, the pedestrians and traffic grew less and less, and they soon
passed the Mansion House and the deserted space in front of the
Royal Exchange, and so on down Fenchurch Street and within sight
of the Tower of London, rising dim and shadowy in the smoky air.
Jones remembered all this perfectly well, and thought it was his
intense preoccupation that made the distance seem so short. But it
was when the Tower was left behind and they turned northwards
that he began to notice how altered everything was, and saw that
they were in a neighbourhood where houses were suddenly scarce,
and lanes and fields beginning, and that their only light was the
stars overhead. And, as the deeper consciousness more and more asserted
itself to the exclusion of the surface happenings of his mere
body during the day, the sense of exhaustion vanished, and he realised
that he was moving somewhere in the region of causes behind
the veil, beyond the gross deceptions of the senses, and released
from the clumsy spell of space and time.
Without great surprise, therefore, he turned and saw that his
companion had altered, had shed his overcoat and black hat, and
was moving beside him absolutely without sound. For a brief second
he saw him, tall as a tree, extending through space like a great
shadow, misty and wavering of outline, followed by a sound like
wings in the darkness; but, when he stopped, fear clutching at his
heart, the other resumed his former proportions, and Jones could
plainly see his normal outline against the green field behind.
Then the secretary saw him fumbling at his neck, and at the same
moment the black beard came away from the face in his hand.
"Then you are Thorpe!" he gasped, yet somehow without overwhelming
surprise.
They stood facing one another in the lonely lane, trees meeting
overhead and hiding the stars, and a sound of mournful sighing
among the branches.
"I am Thorpe," was the answer in a voice that almost seemed
part of the wind. "And I have come out of our far past to help you,
for my debt to you is large, and in this life I had but small opportunity
to repay."
Jones thought quickly of the man's kindness to him in the office,
and a great wave of feeling surged through him as he began to remember
dimly the friend by whose side he had already climbed,
perhaps through vast ages of his soul's evolution.
"To help me now?" he whispered.
"You will understand me when you enter into your real memory
and recall how great a debt I have to pay for old faithful kindnesses
of long ago," sighed the other in a voice like falling wind.
"Between us, though, there can be no question of debt," Jones
heard himself saying, and remembered the reply that floated to him
on the air and the smile that lightened for a moment the stern eyes
facing him.
"Not of debt, indeed, but of privilege."
Jones felt his heart leap out towards this man, this old friend,
tried by centuries and still faithful. He made a movement to seize
his hand. But the other shifted like a thing of mist, and for a moment
the clerk's head swam and his eyes seemed to fail.
"Then you are dead?" he said under his breath with a slight
shiver.
"Five years ago I left the body you knew," replied Thorpe. "I
tried to help you then instinctively, not fully recognising you. But
now I can accomplish far more."
With an awful sense of foreboding and dread in his heart, the
secretary was beginning to understand.
"It has to do with—with—?"
"Your past dealings with the Manager," came the answer, as the
wind rose louder among the branches overhead and carried off
the remainder of the sentence into the air.
Jones's memory, which was just beginning to stir among the
deepest layers of all, shut down suddenly with a snap, and he followed
his companion over fields and down sweet-smelling lanes
where the air was fragrant and cool, till they came to a large house,
standing gaunt and lonely in the shadows at the edge of a wood.
It was wrapped in utter stillness, with windows heavily draped in
black, and the clerk, as he looked, felt such an overpowering wave
of sadness invade him that his eyes began to burn and smart, and he
was conscious of a desire to shed tears.
The key made a harsh noise as it turned in the lock, and when the
door swung open into a lofty hall they heard a confused sound of
rustling and whispering, as of a great throng of people pressing forward
to meet them. The air seemed full of swaying movement, and
Jones was certain he saw hands held aloft and dim faces claiming
recognition, while in his heart, already oppressed by the approaching
burden of vast accumulated memories, he was aware of the uncoiling
of something that had been asleep for ages.
As they advanced he heard the doors close with a muffled
thunder behind them, and saw that the shadows seemed to retreat
and shrink away towards the interior of the house, carrying the
hands and faces with them. He heard the wind singing round
the walls and over the roof, and its wailing voice mingled with the
sound of deep, collective breathing that filled the house like the
murmur of a sea; and as they walked up the broad staircase and
through the vaulted rooms, where pillars rose like the stems of
trees, he knew that the building was crowded, row upon row, with
the thronging memories of his own long past.
"This is the House of the Past," whispered Thorpe beside him, as
they moved silently from room to room; "the house of your past.
It is full from cellar to roof with the memories of what you have
done, thought, and felt from the earliest stages of your evolution
until now.
"The house climbs up almost to the clouds, and stretches back
into the heart of the wood you saw outside, but the remoter halls
are filled with the ghosts of ages ago too many to count, and even if
we were able to waken them you could not remember them now.
Some day, though, they will come and claim you, and you must
know them, and answer their questions, for they can never rest till
they have exhausted themselves again through you, and justice has
been perfectly worked out.
"But now follow me closely, and you shall see the particular
memory for which I am permitted to be your guide, so that you
may know and understand a great force in your present life, and
may use the sword of justice, or rise to the level of a great forgiveness,
according to your degree of power."
Icy thrills ran through the trembling clerk, and as he walked
slowly beside his companion he heard from the vaults below, as
well as from more distant regions of the vast building, the stirring
and sighing of the serried ranks of sleepers, sounding in the still air
like a chord swept from unseen strings stretched somewhere among
the very foundations of the house.
Stealthily, picking their way among the great pillars, they moved
up the sweeping staircase and through several dark corridors and
halls, and presently stopped outside a small door in an archway
where the shadows were very deep.
"Remain close by my side, and remember to utter no cry," whispered
the voice of his guide, and as the clerk turned to reply he saw
his face was stern to whiteness and even shone a little in the darkness.
The room they entered seemed at first to be pitchy black, but
gradually the secretary perceived a faint reddish glow against the
farther end, and thought he saw figures moving silently to and fro.
"Now watch!" whispered Thorpe, as they pressed close to the
wall near the door and waited. "But remember to keep absolute silence.
It is a torture scene."
Jones felt utterly afraid, and would have turned to fly if he dared,
for an indescribable terror seized him and his knees shook; but
some power that made escape impossible held him remorselessly
there, and with eyes glued on the spots of light he crouched against
the wall and waited.
The figures began to move more swiftly, each in its own dim
light that shed no radiance beyond itself, and he heard a soft clanking
of chains and the voice of a man groaning in pain. Then came
the sound of a door closing, and thereafter Jones saw but one figure,
the figure of an old man, with no cloths on, and fastened with chains to
an iron framework on the floor. His memory gave a sudden leap of
fear as he looked, for the features and white beard were familiar,
and he recalled them as though of yesterday.
The other figures had disappeared, and the old man became the
centre of the terrible picture. Slowly, with ghastly groans; as the
heat below him increased into a steady glow, the aged body rose in
a curve of agony, resting on the iron frame only where the chains
held wrists and ankles fast. Cries and gasps filled the air, and Jones
felt exactly as though they came from his own throat, and as if the
chains were burning into his own wrists and ankles, and the heat
scorching the skin and flesh upon his own back. He began to writhe
and twist himself.
"Spain!" whispered the voice at his side, "and four hundred
years ago."
"And the purpose?" gasped the perspiring clerk, though he knew
quite well what the answer must be.
"To extort the name of a friend, to his death and betrayal," came
the reply through the darkness.
A sliding panel opened with a little rattle in the wall immediately
above the rack, and a face, framed in the same red glow, appeared
and looked down upon the dying victim. Jones was only just able to
choke a scream, for he recognised the tall dark man of his dreams.
With horrible, gloating eyes he gazed down upon the writhing form
of the old man, and his lips moved as in speaking, though no words
were actually audible.
"He asks again for the name," explained the other, as the clerk
struggled with the intense hatred and loathing that threatened every
moment to result in screams and action. His ankles and wrists
pained him so that he could scarcely keep still, but a merciless
power held him to the scene.
He saw the old man, with a fierce cry, raise his tortured head and
spit up into the face at the panel, and then the shutter slid back
again, and a moment later the increased glow beneath the body, accompanied
by awful writhing, told of the application of further
heat. There came the odour of burning flesh; the white beard curled
and burned to a crisp; the body fell back limp upon the red-hot
iron, and then shot up again in fresh agony; cry after cry, the most
awful in the world, rang out with deadened sound between the four
walls; and again the panel slid back creaking, and revealed the
dreadful face of the torturer.
Again the name was asked for, and again it was refused; and this
time, after the closing of the panel, a door opened, and the tall thin
man with the evil face came slowly into the chamber. His features
were savage with rage and disappointment, and in the dull red glow
that fell upon them he looked like a very prince of devils. In his
hand he held a pointed iron at white heat.
"Now the murder!" came from Thorpe in a whisper that
sounded as if it was outside the building and far away.
Jones knew quite well what was coming, but was unable even to
close his eyes. He felt all the fearful pains himself just as though he
were actually the sufferer; but now, as he stared, he felt something
more besides; and when the tall man deliberately approached the
rack and plunged the heated iron first into one eye and then into the
other, he heard the faint fizzing of it, and felt his own eyes burst in
frightful pain from his head. At the same moment, unable longer to
control himself, he uttered a wild shriek and dashed forward to
seize the torturer and tear him to a thousand pieces.
Instantly, in a flash, the entire scene vanished; darkness rushed in
to fill the room, and he felt himself lifted off his feet by some force
like a great wind and borne swiftly away into space.
When he recovered his senses he was standing just outside the
house and the figure of Thorpe was beside him in the gloom. The
great doors were in the act of closing behind him, but before they
shut he fancied he caught a glimpse of an immense veiled figure
standing upon the threshold, with flaming eyes, and in his hand a
bright weapon like a shining sword of fire.
"Come quickly now—all is over!" Thorpe whispered.
"And the dark man—?" gasped the clerk, as he moved swiftly by
the other's side.
"In this present life is the Manager of the company."
"And the victim?"
"Was yourself!"
"And the friend he—I refused to betray?"
"I was that friend," answered Thorpe, his voice with every moment
sounding more and more like the cry of the wind. "You gave
your life in agony to save mine."
"And again, in this life, we have all three been together?"
"Yes. Such forces are not soon or easily exhausted, and justice is
not satisfied till all have reaped what they sowed."
Jones had an odd feeling that he was slipping away into some
other state of consciousness. Thorpe began to seem unreal. Presently
he would be unable to ask more questions. He felt utterly sick
and faint with it all, and his strength was ebbing.
"Oh, quick!" he cried, "now tell me more. Why did I see this?
What must I do?"
The wind swept across the field on their right and entered the
wood beyond with a great roar, and the air round him seemed filled
with voices and the rushing of hurried movement.
"To the ends of justice," answered the other, as though speaking
out of the centre of the wind and from a distance, "which sometimes
is entrusted to the hands of those who suffered and were
strong. One wrong cannot be put right by another wrong, but your
life has been so worthy that the opportunity is given to—"
The voice grew fainter and fainter, already it was far overhead
with the rushing wind.
"You may punish or—" Here Jones lost sight of Thorpe's figure
altogether, for he seemed to have vanished and melted away into the
wood behind him. His voice sounded far across the trees, very
weak, and ever rising.
"Or if you can rise to the level of a great forgiveness—"
The voice became inaudible.... The wind came crying out of the
wood again.
Jones shivered and stared about him. He shook himself violently
and rubbed his eyes. The room was dark, the fire was out; he felt
cold and stiff. He got up out of his armchair, still trembling, and lit
the gas. Outside the wind was howling, and when he looked at his
watch he saw that it was very late and he must go to bed.
He had not even changed his office coat; he must have fallen
asleep in the chair as soon as he came in, and he had slept for several
hours. Certainly he had eaten no dinner, for he felt ravenous.
III
Next day, and for several weeks thereafter, the business of the office
went on as usual, and Jones did his work well and behaved outwardly
with perfect propriety. No more visions troubled him, and
his relations with the Manager became, if anything, somewhat
smoother and easier.
True, the man looked a little different, because the clerk kept seeing
him with his inner and outer eye promiscuously, so that one
moment he was broad and red-faced, and the next he was tall, thin,
and dark, enveloped, as it were, in a sort of black atmosphere tinged
with red. While at times a confusion of the two sights took place,
and Jones saw the two faces mingled in a composite countenance
that was very horrible indeed to contemplate. But, beyond this occasional
change in the outward appearance of the Manager, there
was nothing that the secretary noticed as the result of his vision,
and business went on more or less as before, and perhaps even with
a little less friction.
But in the rooms under the roof in Bloomsbury it was different,
for there it was perfectly clear to Jones that Thorpe had come to
take up his abode with him. He never saw him, but he knew all the
time he was there. Every night on returning from his work he was
greeted by the well-known whisper, "Be ready when I give the
sign!" and often in the night he woke up suddenly out of deep sleep
and was aware that Thorpe had that minute moved away from his
bed and was standing waiting and watching somewhere in the darkness
of the room. Often he followed him down the stairs, though
the dim gas jet on the landings never revealed his outline; and sometimes
he did not come into the room at all, but hovered outside the
window, peering through the dirty panes, or sending his whisper
into the chamber in the whistling of the wind.
For Thorpe had come to stay, and Jones knew that he would not
get rid of him until he had fulfilled the ends of justice and accomplished
the purpose for which he was waiting.
Meanwhile, as the days passed, he went through a tremendous
struggle with himself, and came to the perfectly honest decision that
the "level of a great forgiveness" was impossible for him, and that
he must therefore accept the alternative and use the secret knowledge
placed in his hands—and execute justice. And once this decision
was arrived at, he noticed that Thorpe no longer left him alone
during the day as before, but now accompanied him to the office
and stayed more or less at his side all through business hours as
well. His whisper made itself heard in the streets and in the train,
and even in the Manager's room where he worked; sometimes
warning, sometimes urging, but never for a moment suggesting the
abandonment of the main purpose, and more than once so plainly
audible that the clerk felt certain others must have heard it as well as
himself.
The obsession was complete. He felt he was always under
Thorpe's eye day and night, and he knew he must acquit himself
like a man when the moment came, or prove a failure in his own
sight as well in the sight of the other.
And now that his mind was made up, nothing could prevent the
carrying out of the sentence. He bought a pistol, and spent his Saturday
afternoons practising at a target in lonely places along the Essex
shore, marking out in the sand the exact measurements of the
Manager's room. Sundays he occupied in like fashion, putting up at
an inn overnight for the purpose, spending the money that usually
went into the savings bank on travelling expenses and cartridges.
Everything was done very thoroughly, for there must be no possibility
of failure; and at the end of several weeks he had become so
expert with his six-shooter that at a distance of 25 feet, which was
the greatest length of the Manager's room, he could pick the inside
out of a halfpenny nine times out of a dozen, and leave a clean, unbroken
rim.
There was not the slightest desire to delay. He had thought the
matter over from every point of view his mind could reach, and his
purpose was inflexible. Indeed, he felt proud to think that he had
been chosen as the instrument of justice in the infliction of so well-deserved
and so terrible a punishment. Vengeance may have had
some part in his decision, but he could not help that, for he still felt
at times the hot chains burning his wrists and ankles with fierce
agony through to the bone. He remembered the hideous pain of his
slowly roasting back, and the point when he thought death must intervene
to end his suffering, but instead new powers of endurance
had surged up in him, and awful further stretches of pain had
opened up, and unconsciousness seemed farther off than ever. Then
at last the hot irons in his eyes.... It all came back to him, and
caused him to break out in icy perspiration at the mere thought of it
... the vile face at the panel ... the expression of the dark face....
His fingers worked. His blood boiled. It was utterly impossible to
keep the idea of vengeance altogether out of his mind.
Several times he was temporarily baulked of his prey. Odd things
happened to stop him when he was on the point of action. The first
day, for instance, the Manager fainted from the heat. Another time
when he had decided to do the deed, the Manager did not come
down to the office at all. And a third time, when his hand was actually
in his hip pocket, he suddenly heard Thorpe's horrid whisper
telling him to wait, and turning, he saw that the head cashier had
entered the room noiselessly without his noticing it. Thorpe evidently
knew what he was about, and did not intend to let the clerk
bungle the matter.
He fancied, moreover, that the head cashier was watching him.
He was always meeting him in unexpected corners and places, and
the cashier never seemed to have an adequate excuse for being there.
His movements seemed suddenly of particular interest to others in
the office as well, for clerks were always being sent to ask him unnecessary
questions, and there was apparently a general design to
keep him under a sort of surveillance, so that he was never much
alone with the Manager in the private room where they worked.
And once the cashier had even gone so far as to suggest that he
could take his holiday earlier than usual if he liked, as the work had
been very arduous of late and the heat exceedingly trying.
He noticed, too, that he was sometimes followed by a certain individual
in the streets, a careless-looking sort of man, who never
came face to face with him, or actually ran into him, but who was
always in his train or omnibus, and whose eye he often caught observing
him over the top of his newspaper, and who on one occasion
was even waiting at the door of his lodgings when he came out
to dine.
There were other indications too, of various sorts, that led him
to think something was at work to defeat his purpose, and that he
must act at once before these hostile forces could prevent.
And so the end came very swiftly, and was thoroughly approved
by Thorpe.
It was towards the close of July, and one of the hottest days London
had ever known, for the City was like an oven, and the particles
of dust seemed to burn the throats of the unfortunate toilers in
street and office. The portly Manager, who suffered cruelly owing
to his size, came down perspiring and gasping with the heat. He
carried a light-coloured umbrella to protect his head.
"He'll want something more than that, though!" Jones laughed
quietly to himself when he saw him enter.
The pistol was safely in his hip pocket, every one of its six chambers
loaded.
The Manager saw the smile on his face, and gave him a long
steady look as he sat down to his desk in the corner. A few minutes
later he touched the bell for the head cashier—a single ring—and
then asked Jones to fetch some papers from another safe in the
room upstairs.
A deep inner trembling seized the secretary as he noticed these
precautions, for he saw that the hostile forces were at work against
him, and yet he felt he could delay no longer and must act that very
morning, interference or no interference. However, he went obediently
up in the lift to the next floor, and while fumbling with the
combination of the safe, known only to himself, the cashier, and the
Manager, he again heard Thorpe's horrid whisper just behind him:
"You must do it to-day! You must do it to-day!"
He came down again with the papers, and found the Manager
alone. The room was like a furnace, and a wave of dead heated air
met him in the face as he went in. The moment he passed the doorway
he realised that he had been the subject of conversation between
the head cashier and his enemy. They had been discussing
him. Perhaps an inkling of his secret had somehow got into their
minds. They had been watching him for days past. They had become
suspicious.
Clearly, he must act now, or let the opportunity slip by perhaps
for ever. He heard Thorpe's voice in his ear, but this time it was no
mere whisper, but a plain human voice, speaking out loud.
"Now!" it said. "Do it now!"
The room was empty. Only the Manager and himself were in it.
Jones turned from his desk where he had been standing, and
locked the door leading into the main office. He saw the army of
clerks scribbling in their shirt-sleeves, for the upper half of the door
was of glass. He had perfect control of himself, and his heart was
beating steadily.
The Manager, hearing the key turn in the lock, looked up
sharply.
"What's that you're doing?" he asked quickly.
"Only locking the door, sir," replied the secretary in a quite even
voice.
"Why? Who told you to—?"
"The voice of Justice, sir," replied Jones, looking steadily into the
hated face.
The Manager looked black for a moment, and stared angrily
across the room at him. Then suddenly his expression changed as he
stared, and he tried to smile. It was meant to be a kind smile evidently,
but it only succeeded in being frightened.
"That is a good idea in this weather," he said lightly, "but it
would be much better to lock it on the outside, wouldn't it, Mr.
Jones?"
"I think not, sir. You might escape me then. Now you can't."
Jones took his pistol out and pointed it at the other's face. Down
the barrel he saw the features of the tall dark man, evil and sinister.
Then the outline trembled a little and the face of the Manager
slipped back into its place. It was white as death, and shining with
perspiration.
"You tortured me to death four hundred years ago," said the
clerk in the same steady voice, "and now the dispensers of justice
have chosen me to punish you."
The Manager's face turned to flame, and then back to chalk
again. He made a quick movement towards the telephone bell,
stretching out a hand to reach it, but at the same moment Jones
pulled the trigger and the wrist was shattered, splashing the wall behind
with blood.
"That's one place where the chains burnt," he said quietly to
himself. His hand was absolutely steady, and he felt that he was a
hero.
The Manager was on his feet, with a scream of pain, supporting
himself with his right hand on the desk in front of him, but Jones
pressed the trigger again, and a bullet flew into the other wrist, so
that the big man, deprived of support, fell forward with a crash on
to the desk.
"You damned madman!" shrieked the Manager. "Drop that
pistol!"
"That's another place," was all Jones said, still taking careful aim
for another shot.
The big man, screaming and blundering, scrambled beneath the
desk, making frantic efforts to hide, but the secretary took a step
forward and fired two shots in quick succession into his projecting
legs, hitting first one ankle and then the other, and smashing them
horribly.
"Two more places where the chains burnt," he said, going a little
nearer.
The Manager, still shrieking, tried desperately to squeeze his
bulk behind the shelter of the opening beneath the desk, but he was
far too large, and his bald head protruded through on the other side.
Jones caught him by the scruff of his great neck and dragged him
yelping out on to the carpet. He was covered with blood, and
flopped helplessly upon his broken wrists.
"Be quick now!" cried the voice of Thorpe.
There was a tremendous commotion and banging at the door,
and Jones gripped his pistol tightly. Something seemed to crash
through his brain, clearing it for a second, so that he thought he saw
beside him a great veiled figure, with drawn sword and flaming
eyes, and sternly approving attitude.
"Remember the eyes! Remember the eyes!" hissed Thorpe in the
air above him.
Jones felt like a god, with a god's power. Vengeance disappeared
from his mind. He was acting impersonally as an instrument in the
hands of the Invisibles who dispense justice and balance accounts.
He bent down and put the barrel close into the other's face, smiling
a little as he saw the childish efforts of the arms to cover his head.
Then he pulled the trigger, and a bullet went straight into the right
eye, blackening the skin. Moving the pistol two inches the other
way, he sent another bullet crashing into the left eye. Then he stood
upright over his victim with a deep sigh of satisfaction.
The Manager wriggled convulsively for the space of a single second,
and then lay still in death.
There was not a moment to lose, for the door was already broken
in and violent hands were at his neck. Jones put the pistol to his
temple and once more pressed the trigger with his finger.
But this time there was no report. Only a little dead click answered
the pressure, for the secretary had forgotten that the pistol
had only six chambers, and that he had used them all. He threw
the useless weapon on to the floor, laughing a little out loud, and
turned, without a struggle, to give himself up.
"I had to do it," he said quietly, while they tied him. "It was simply
my duty! And now I am ready to face the consequences, and
Thorpe will be proud of me. For justice has been done and the gods
are satisfied."
He made not the slightest resistance, and when the two policemen
marched him off through the crowd of shuddering little clerks
in the office, he again saw the veiled figure moving majestically in
front of him, making slow sweeping circles with the flaming sword,
to keep back the host of faces that were thronging in upon him
from the Other Region.