WILLIAM continued his daily visits to the Hospital, but he was
not allowed to see June. Life itself was no longer in immediate danger,
but she had had a relapse and the doctors were still afraid that the
mental injury would be permanent. Time alone could prove if such was
the case or no, but the mood induced by the interview with William, and
the strange words she had used to him, which seemed to belong to some
fixed and secret obsession, were not a good sign.
Following his visit there had been a rise of temperature. And this
meant further weakening of a terror-haunted mind. Even if the need for
anxiety was less acute, full recovery at best would be slow and more
than ever doubtful.
June was still menaced by the shadow when an event occurred which
intensified William’s distress. One morning, about a week after he had
rejected his master’s last appeal, an inspector of police came to see
him. Neighbours of S. Gedge Antiques had called attention to the fact
that the shop had remained closed for several days, and as it was known
that the old man had lately been living alone, the circumstance had
given rise to a certain amount of suspicion. William’s name had been
mentioned as lately in his employ and he was asked to throw what light
he could on the mystery.
“The neighbours think we ought to enter the shop and see if anything
has happened,” said the police inspector.
William thought so too. Remembering the last meeting with his master,
which had left a scar he would carry to the grave, a kind of prophetic
foreknowledge came to him now of a new development to this tragedy.
It was not convenient just then to leave the shop as he happened to
be in sole charge of it, therefore he was unable to accompany the
inspector down the street. But half an hour later, on the return of his
new employer, curiosity forced him to put on his hat and go forth to
see if the thing he feared had come to pass.
The police, already, had made an entry of Number Forty-six. Moreover a
knot of people was assembled about the familiar door, which was half
open. Its shutters were still up, but two constables were guarding the
precincts. William caught the words “Murder--Suicide--Robbery” as he
came up with the throng.
In a state of painful excitement, he made his way to the door.
S. Gedge Antiques, it seemed, had been found lying dead on the shop
floor. The young man wished to pass in, but the police had instructions
to allow no one to enter. A doctor summoned by telephone, had not yet
come.
William was still discussing the matter, when the inspector whose
acquaintance he had made already, hearing voices at the door, came from
the shop interior to see if it was the doctor who had at last arrived.
He recognized William at once and invited him in.
Outside was a murky November day, but with the windows still shuttered,
it was necessary for three rather ineffectual gas-jets to be lit in the
shop. The light they gave was weird and fitful, but it sufficed to
enable the young man to see what had occurred.
As yet the body had not been touched. In accordance with custom in such
cases, it had to lie just as it was until viewed by a doctor, for if
moved by unskilful hands, some possible clue as to the cause of death
might be obliterated.
The old man was lying supine, before the Hoodoo. One glance at that
face, so drawn, so thwarted, and yet so pitiful in its ghastliness, was
enough to convince William that death had come directly from the hand
of God. With a shiver he recalled the words of a strange and terrible
clairvoyance, of late so often in his ears. “Am I struck? Am I like
Uncle Si? Am I like the Hoodoo?”
As the old man lay now, in all the starkness of his soul, with only
the essence shewing in that tragic face, William was overcome by his
likeness to the image. It was as if, at the last, his very nature had
gone out to some false god who had perverted him. That splay-footed
monster, so large of maw, an emblem of bestial greed, was too plainly a
symbol of the mammon of unrighteousness to which the master had devoted
his life.
Consumed by pity, William turned away from a sight which he was no
longer able to bear.