With this hanging over his
head, the next night, as I have already told you, he committed suicide.”

He glanced at the clock again, and I saw that the hands now pointed to
ten minutes to one. The fire was beginning to burn low and the room
surely was growing strangely cold. “That’s not quite all,” said Anthony, again looking round. “Are you
sure you wouldn’t prefer to hear it to-morrow?”

The mixture of shame and pride and curiosity again prevailed. “No: tell me the rest of it at once,” I said. Before speaking, he peered suddenly at some point behind my chair,
shading his eyes. I followed his glance, and knew what he meant by
saying that sometimes one could not be sure whether one saw something
or not. But was that an outlined shadow that intervened between me and
the wall? It was difficult to focus; I did not know whether it was near
the wall or near my chair. It seemed to clear away, anyhow, as I looked
more closely at it. “You see nothing?” asked Anthony. “No: I don’t think so,” said I. “And you?”

“I think I do,” he said, and his eyes followed something which was
invisible to mine. They came to rest between him and the chimney-piece. Looking steadily there, he spoke again. “All this happened some weeks ago,” he said, “when you were out in
Switzerland, and since then, up till last night, I saw nothing further. But all the time I was expecting something further. I felt that, as
far as I was concerned, it was not all over yet, and last night, with
the intention of assisting any communication to come through to me
from--from beyond, I went into the Dover Street tube-station at a few
minutes before one o’clock, the hour at which both the assault and
the suicide had taken place. The platform when I arrived on it was
absolutely empty, or appeared to be so, but presently, just as I began
to hear the roar of the approaching train, I saw there was the figure
of a man standing some twenty yards from me, looking into the tunnel. He had not come down with me in the lift, and the moment before he had
not been there. He began moving towards me, and then I saw who it was,
and I felt a stir of wind icy-cold coming towards me as he approached. It was not the draught that heralds the approach of a train, for it
came from the opposite direction. He came close up to me, and I saw
there was recognition in his eyes. He raised his face towards me and
I saw his lips move, but, perhaps in the increasing noise from the
tunnel, I heard nothing come from them. He put out his hand, as if
entreating me to do something, and with a cowardice from which I cannot
forgive myself, I shrank from him, for I knew, by the sign that I have
told you, that this was one from the dead, and my flesh quaked before
him, drowning for the moment all pity and all desire to help him, if
that was possible. Certainly he had something which he wanted of me,
but I recoiled from him. And by now the train was emerging from the
tunnel, and next moment, with a dreadful gesture of despair, he threw
himself in front of it.”

As he finished speaking he got up quickly from his chair, still looking
fixedly in front of him. I saw his pupils dilate, and his mouth worked. “It is coming,” he said. “I am to be given a chance of atoning for
my cowardice. There is nothing to be afraid of: I must remember that
myself....”

As he spoke there came from the panelling above the chimney-piece one
loud shattering crack, and the cold wind again circled about my head. I found myself shrinking back in my chair with my hands held in front
of me as instinctively I screened myself against something which I knew
was there but which I could not see. Every sense told me that there was
a presence in the room other than mine and Anthony’s, and the horror of
it was that I could not see it. Any vision, however terrible, would, I
felt, be more tolerable than this clear certain knowledge that close to
me was this invisible thing. And yet what horror might not be disclosed
of the face of the dead and the crushed chest.... But all I could see,
as I shuddered in this cold wind, was the familiar walls of the room,
and Anthony standing in front of me stiff and firm, making, as I knew,
a call on his courage. His eyes were focused on something quite close
to him, and some semblance of a smile quivered on his mouth. And then
he spoke again. “Yes, I know you,” he said. “And you want something of me. Tell me,
then, what it is.”

There was absolute silence, but what was silence to my ears could not
have been so to his, for once or twice he nodded, and once he said,
“Yes: I see. I will do it.” And with the knowledge that, even as there
was someone here whom I could not see, so there was speech going on
which I could not hear, this terror of the dead and of the unknown
rose in me with the sense of powerlessness to move that accompanies
nightmare. I could not stir, I could not speak. I could only strain my
ears for the inaudible and my eyes for the unseen, while the cold wind
from the very valley of the shadow of death streamed over me. It was
not that the presence of death itself was terrible; it was that from
its tranquillity and serene keeping there had been driven some unquiet
soul unable to rest in peace for whatever ultimate awakening rouses the
countless generations of those who have passed away, driven, no less,
from whatever activities are theirs, back into the material world from
which it should have been delivered. Never, until the gulf between the
living and the dead was thus bridged, had it seemed so immense and so
unnatural. It is possible that the dead may have communication with
the living, and it was not that exactly that so terrified me, for such
communication, as we know it, comes voluntarily from them. But here was
something icy-cold and crime-laden, that was chased back from the peace
that would not pacify it. And then, most horrible of all, there came a change in these unseen
conditions. Anthony was silent now, and from looking straight and
fixedly in front of him, he began to glance sideways to where I sat and
back again, and with that I felt that the unseen presence had turned
its attention from him to me. And now, too, gradually and by awful
degrees I began to see.... There came an outline of shadow across the chimney-piece and the panels
above it. It took shape: it fashioned itself into the outline of a
man. Within the shape of the shadow details began to form themselves,
and I saw wavering in the air, like something concealed by haze, the
semblance of a face, stricken and tragic, and burdened with such a
weight of woe as no human face had ever worn. Next, the shoulders
outlined themselves, and a stain livid and red spread out below them,
and suddenly the vision leaped into clearness. There he stood, the
chest crushed in and drowned in the red stain, from which broken ribs,
like the bones of a wrecked ship, protruded.