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 pa.s.sed 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 gla.s.s. 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 d.a.m.ned 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 att.i.tude.
"Remember the eyes! Remember the eyes!" hissed Thorpe in the air above him.
Jones felt like a G.o.d, with a G.o.d"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 s.p.a.ce 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 G.o.ds 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.
_The Man Who Found Out_
(A Nightmare)
1
Professor Mark Ebor, the scientist, led a double life, and the only persons who knew it were his a.s.sistant, Dr. Laidlaw, and his publishers.
But a double life need not always be a bad one, and, as Dr. Laidlaw and the gratified publishers well knew, the parallel lives of this particular man were equally good, and indefinitely produced would certainly have ended in a heaven somewhere that can suitably contain such strangely opposite characteristics as his remarkable personality combined.
For Mark Ebor, F.R.S., etc., etc., was that unique combination hardly ever met with in actual life, a man of science and a mystic.
As the first, his name stood in the gallery of the great, and as the second--but there came the mystery! For under the pseudonym of "Pilgrim"
(the author of that brilliant series of books that appealed to so many), his ident.i.ty was as well concealed as that of the anonymous writer of the weather reports in a daily newspaper. Thousands read the sanguine, optimistic, stimulating little books that issued annually from the pen of "Pilgrim," and thousands bore their daily burdens better for having read; while the Press generally agreed that the author, besides being an incorrigible enthusiast and optimist, was also--a woman; but no one ever succeeded in penetrating the veil of anonymity and discovering that "Pilgrim" and the biologist were one and the same person.
Mark Ebor, as Dr. Laidlaw knew him in his laboratory, was one man; but Mark Ebor, as he sometimes saw him after work was over, with rapt eyes and ecstatic face, discussing the possibilities of "union with G.o.d" and the future of the human race, was quite another.
"I have always held, as you know," he was saying one evening as he sat in the little study beyond the laboratory with his a.s.sistant and intimate, "that Vision should play a large part in the life of the awakened man--not to be regarded as infallible, of course, but to be observed and made use of as a guide-post to possibilities--"
"I am aware of your peculiar views, sir," the young doctor put in deferentially, yet with a certain impatience.
"For Visions come from a region of the consciousness where observation and experiment are out of the question," pursued the other with enthusiasm, not noticing the interruption, "and, while they should be checked by reason afterwards, they should not be laughed at or ignored.