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.