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. 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.