Julian was in a strange fit of tension when he heard Tommy Bates'
steps coming up the garden path. They were very uncertain steps.
Julian threw open his study door as the secretary reeled into the
hall. He had longed for company this last grey craven hour or
two, and this was all the company he was to enjoy for to-night at
least!
Humming and lurching and stinking of whisky as Tommy was, there
was not much comfort to be sought from him.
Julian swore at him sonorously then he hustled him off to bed.
Soon he was snoring. Julian had somehow shuffled away his fear in
his coercion of Tommy.
'I'll get my blankets and pillow out of my room, and lie down in
Tommy's. I feel I can sleep now,' he thought.
He went into his room heedlessly in the dark and trod on
something or somebody, just as he was striking a match.
It was the big black snake that lived in the ant-hill at the back
of the house whose movements Jim and the piccanin had been
discussing. The snake dealt with Julian.
Julian staggered about looking for crystals and a lancet. They
were locked up safely and perhaps Jim, or perhaps Tommy had the
key.
Tommy would not wake to any purpose. Just as Julian was shaking
him, the clock in the study a clock Julian had won in his
sprinting days chimed twelve very melodiously. Everything seemed
to be locked up. Had Jim the key of the spirit cupboard or Tommy?
Julian was growing drowsy in his struggles against the current of
fortune. Hadn't he better give in, and let himself be carried
down? Almost before he knew it, he was lying on the sofa in his
study where the lamp with the red shade was burning so cosily.
Likely enough his eye caught a quaint ornament on his study table
at the juncture the figure of the Serpent on the Cross.
It may be too, that some sort of startled respect came to him for
the Worm that had turned at last, not vindictively, but in the
interests of the Commonweal.
Probability points to this one fact at least, that Julian fumbled
for something in his pocket-book ere he resigned himself finally
to the growing torpor.
A card was found on the study floor when morning came; they found
the pocket-book itself on the conch beside him.
The card was the one that had come at his last breakfast-time
from Dick Hunter, the card that he had reserved rather indignantly
for future consideration.
On the one side of it was a color-process reproduction, very good
of its kind Christ in Glory the Rex Tremendoe Majestatis and also
the Fons Pietatis of the Dies Ira with tears in His Eyes and
thorns on His Brows as He judged just judgment. On the other side
were four lines from Browning, faithfully transcribed save for
the change of a name. They were written in the shaking writing of
a sick man, in Hunter's round, unformed hand:
'For the main criminal I have no hope
Except in such a suddenness of fate
So may the truth be by one blow flashed out.
And Julian see one instant and be saved.'
There is no question as to the suddenness of the stroke of fate
that ended Julian's career in South Africa. There is an open
question as to the illuminative force of that blow, and we must
wait for the answer.