“I might have smelt a rat! I always knew that this would be the danger.” He changed suddenly to a confidential tone, fixing his sepulchral stare on Heyst. “And yet here I am, taken in by the fellow, like the veriest fool. I’ve been always on the watch for some such beastly influence, but here I am, fairly caught. He shaved himself right in front of me—and I never guessed!”
The shrill laugh, following on the low tone of secrecy, sounded so convincingly insane that Heyst got up as if moved by a spring. Mr. Jones stepped back two paces, but displayed no uneasiness.
“It’s as clear as daylight!” he uttered mournfully, and fell silent.
Behind him the doorway flickered lividly, and the sound as of a naval action somewhere away on the horizon filled the breathless pause. Mr. Jones inclined his head on his shoulder. His mood had completely changed.
“What do you say, unarmed man? Shall we go and see what is detaining my trusted Martin so long? He asked me to keep you engaged in friendly conversation till he made a further examination of that track. Ha, ha, ha!”
“He is no doubt ransacking my house,” said Heyst.
He was bewildered. It seemed to him that all this was an incomprehensible dream, or perhaps an elaborate otherworld joke, contrived by that spectre in a gorgeous dressing-gown.
Mr. Jones looked at him with a horrible, cadaverous smile of inscrutable mockery, and pointed to the door. Heyst passed through it first. His feelings had become so blunted that he did not care how soon he was shot in the back.
“How oppressive the air is!” the voice of Mr. Jones said at his elbow. “This stupid storm gets on my nerves. I would welcome some rain, though it would be unpleasant to get wet. On the other hand, this exasperating thunder has the advantage of covering the sound of our approach. The lightning’s not so convenient. Ah, your house is fully illuminated! My clever Martin is punishing your stock of candles. He belongs to the unceremonious classes, which are also unlovely, untrustworthy, and so on.”
“I left the candles burning,” said Heyst, “to save him trouble.”
“You really believed he would go to your house?” asked Mr. Jones with genuine interest.
“I had that notion, strongly. I do believe he is there now.”
“And you don’t mind?”
“No!”
“You don’t!” Mr. Jones stopped to wonder. “You are an extraordinary man,” he said suspiciously, and moved on, touching elbows with Heyst.
In the latter’s breast dwelt a deep silence, the complete silence of unused faculties. At this moment, by simply shouldering Mr. Jones, he could have thrown him down and put himself, by a couple of leaps, beyond the certain aim of the revolver; but he did not even think of that. His very will seemed dead of weariness. He moved automatically, his head low, like a prisoner captured by the evil power of a masquerading skeleton out of a grave. Mr. Jones took charge of the direction. They fetched a wide sweep. The echoes of distant thunder seemed to dog their footsteps.
“By the by,” said Mr. Jones, as if unable to restrain his curiosity, “aren’t you anxious about that—ouch!—that fascinating creature to whom you owe whatever pleasure you can find in our visit?”
“I have placed her in safety,” said Heyst. “I—I took good care of that.”
Mr. Jones laid a hand on his arm.
“You have? Look! Is that what you mean?”
Heyst raised his head. In the flicker of lightning the desolation of the cleared ground on his left leaped out and sank into the night, together with the elusive forms of things distant, pale, unearthly. But in the brilliant square of the door he saw the girl—the woman he had longed to see once more—as if enthroned, with her hands on the arms of the chair. She was in black; her face was white, her head dreamily inclined on her breast. He saw her only as low as her knees. He saw her—there, in the room, alive with a sombre reality. It was no mocking vision. She was not in the forest—but there! She sat there in the chair, seemingly without strength, yet without fear, tenderly stooping.
“Can you understand their power?” whispered the hot breath of Mr. Jones into his ear. “Can there be a more disgusting spectacle? It’s enough to make the earth detestable. She seems to have found her affinity. Move on closer. If I have to shoot you in the end, then perhaps you will die cured.”
Heyst obeyed the pushing pressure of a revolver barrel between his shoulders. He felt it distinctly, but he did not feel the ground under his feet. They found the steps, without his being aware that he was ascending them—slowly, one by one. Doubt entered into him—a doubt of a new kind, formless, hideous. It seemed to spread itself all over him, enter his limbs, and lodge in his entrails. He stopped suddenly, with a thought that he who experienced such a feeling had no business to live—or perhaps was no longer living.
Everything—the bungalow, the forest, the open ground—trembled incessantly; the earth, the sky itself, shivered all the time, and the only thing immovable in the shuddering universe was the interior of the lighted room and the woman in black sitting in the light of the eight candle-flames. They flung around her an intolerable brilliance which hurt his eyes, seemed to sear his very brain with the radiation of infernal heat. It was some time before his scorched eyes made out Ricardo seated on the floor at some little distance, his back to the doorway, but only partly so; one side of his upturned face showing the absorbed, all-forgetful rapture of his contemplation.
The grip of Mr. Jones’s hard claw drew Heyst back a little. In the roll of thunder, swelling and subsiding, he whispered in his ear a sarcastic: “Of course!”
A great shame descended upon Heyst—the shame of guilt, absurd and maddening. Mr. Jones drew him still farther back into the darkness of the verandah.
“This is
