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.