The awful story was ended at last.
Then with a face in which the horror came out in waves, inexpressibly terrible to see, with each beat of the pulses a wave of unutterable horror, she slowly rose.
Her arms fell heavily to her sides. Slowly, slowly, she turned.
Her feet made no noise as she moved across the room. Her garments did not rustle. But she walked, not as an elderly woman, but as a very old woman.
The door clicked softly. He was left alone in the comfortable room.
Alone.
He stood up, tottered a few steps in the direction she had gone, and then, with a resounding crash which shook the furniture in a succession of quick rattles, his great form fell prone on the floor.
He lay there, face downwards, with the sunshine pouring on him, with no sign of movement.
* * *
The afternoon was begun. London was as it had been for days. The uneasiness and unrest which were now become the common nightmare of its inhabitants neither grew nor lessened.
The afternoon papers were merely repetitions of former days. Great financial houses were tottering, rumours of wars were growing every hour, no country was at rest, no colony secure.
In the pale winter sunshine men moved heavily about their business. The common burden was shared by all, but there was no loud trumpet note during those hours.
About four o'clock some carriages drove to Downing Street. In one sat Sir Michael Manichoe, Father Ripon, Harold Spence, and Basil Gortre.
In another was the English Consul at Jerusalem, who had arrived with Spence from the Holy City, Dr. Schmöulder from Berlin, and the Duke of Suffolk.
The carriages stopped at the house of the Prime Minister and the party entered.
Nothing occurred, visibly, for an hour, though urgent messages were passing over the telephone wires.
In an hour's time a cab came driving furiously down the Embankment, round by the new Scotland Yard and St. Stephen's Club, into Parliament Street.
The cab contained the Editor of the Times. Following his arrival, in a few seconds a number of other cabs drove up, all at a fast pace. Each one contained a prominent journalist. Ommaney was among the first to arrive, and Folliott Farmer was with him.
It was nearly an hour later when these people left Downing Street, all with grave faces.
A few minutes after their departure, Sir Michael and his party came out, accompanied by several ministers, including the Home Secretary and the Chief Commissioner of Police.
Though the distance to Scotland Yard was only a few hundred yards, the latter gentleman jumped into a passing hansom and was driven rapidly to his office.
This brings the time up to about six o'clock.
* * *
It was not quite dark in Sir Robert Llwellyn's room. A faint yellow flicker came through the window from a gas lamp in the street. A dull and distant murmur from the Edgware Road could be dimly heard, otherwise the room was silent.
Llwellyn did not lie where he had fallen. His loss of consciousness had lasted long and no one had come to help him. But the end was not just yet. The merciful oblivion of passing from a faint into death was denied him.
He came to his senses late in the afternoon, about the time the large party of people emerged on foot and in carriages from the narrow cul-de-sac of Downing Street.
He felt cold, an icy cold. There came a terrible moment. The physical sensation was swamped and forgotten in one frightful flash of realisation. He was alone, the end was at hand.
Alone.
Instinctively he tried to rise. His legs would not answer the message of his brain when he tried to move them. They lay like long dead cylinders behind him. He was able to drag himself slowly, for a yard or two, until he reached an ottoman. He could not lift the vast weight of his body off the floor. It was utterly beyond his strength. He propped his body against the seat. It was all he was able to accomplish. Icy cold sweat ran down his cheeks at the exertion. After he finished moving, he found all strength had left him.
He was paralysed from the waist downwards. The rest of his body was too weak to move him.
Only his brain was working with a terrible activity as he lay alone in the chill dark.
There came into his molten brain the impulse to pray. Deep down in every human heart that impulse lies. It is a seed planted there by God that it may grow into the tree of salvation.
The effort was subconscious. Almost simultaneously with it came the awful remembrance of what he had done.
A name danced in letters of flame in his brain -- Judas.
He looked round for some means to end this unbearable torture. He could see nothing. The room was cold and dark, but he knew there was a container of razors on a table by the window.
When he tried to move he found the paralysis was growing upwards.
Then this was to be the end?
A momentary flood of relief came over him. His blood seemed warm again.
But the sensation died rapidly away, the physical and mental glow alike.
He remembered those cases, frequent enough, when the whole body loses the power of movement, but the brain survives, active, alive, helpless.
And all the sweat which the physical glow had induced turned to little icicles all over his body, even as the thought froze in his brain.
An hour went by.
Alone in the dark.
His tongue was parched and dry. A sudden wonder came to him -- could he speak still?
Without realising what word he used as a test he spoke.
"Kate."
It was a gaunt whisper in the silence.
Silence. How silent it was. Yet no, he could hear the distant rumbling of the traffic. He became suddenly conscious of it. Surely it was unusually loud?
It must be this physical change which was creeping over him. His head was swimming, disordered.
Yet the traffic seemed louder now.
And louder, as he began to listen intently. He could not move his head to catch the sound more clearly, but he was beginning to hear it well enough.
No traffic ever sounded quite like that. It was like an advancing tide, thundering, as a horse gallops over flat, level sands.
A great sea rushing towards -- towards what?
Then he knew what that sound was.
At last he knew.
He could hear the individual shouts that made up the enormous mass of menacing sound.
The nation was coming to take its revenge on its betrayer.
Mob law!
They had found him out. It was as Schuabe had said -- the great conspiracy was at an end. The stunning truth was out, flying round the world with its glad message.
Yet, although once more the dishonoured Cross gleamed as the one solace in the hearts of men whose faith had been weak, though at that moment the glad news was racing round the world, yet the evil was not over.
The Prince of the Powers of the air had reigned too long. Not lightly was he to relinquish his sceptre and dominion.
They were in the street below. The whole space was packed with the screaming multitude. The cries and curses came up to him in one roaring volume of sound, sounds that one looking over the brink of the pit of Hell might hear.
A heavy blow on the stout door of the old well-built house shook the walls where the palsied Judas lay impotent.
Another crash. The room was much lighter now. The crowd below had lights with them.
Crash!
The door opened silently. Lady Llwellyn came swiftly into the room.
She wore a long white robe. Her face was lighted as if a lamp shone behind it.
In her hand was the great cross which had been hanging above her bed.
When Christ died and bade the dying thief ascend with him to Paradise, can we say that His silence condemned the other?
Her face was all aglow with love.
"Robert!" she said. Her voice was like the voice of an angel.
Her arms went round him, her kisses pressed
on him, the great cross was lifted to his dying eyes.
A great thunder on the stairs, furious voices, the tide rising higher, higher.
Death.
Chapter 32 (last Chapter)
The news came to Walktown, the final confirmation of what had been so long suspected, in a short telegram from Basil, dispatched immediately he left Downing Street.
Mr. Byars and Helena had been kept well acquainted with every step in the progress of the investigation.
Ever since Basil had left Walktown, after his holiday visit, his suspicions had been ringing in the vicar's ears.
Then, when the matter had been communicated to Sir Michael and Father Ripon, when Spence had started out to Jerusalem, and Mr. Byars knew that all the powers of wealth and intellect were at work, his hopes revived.
The vicar's faith had never for a single moment wavered.
He had been one of the faithful thousands: the learned, the simple, the Methodists, the ritualists, who knew this thing could not be.
Nevertheless, his courage had been failing him. In his own immediate neighbourhood the consequences of the false "Discovery" nearly broke his heart. He had no need to look beyond Walktown. He heard the Holy Names blasphemed with all the inventions of obscene imaginations, assailed with all the wit of full-blooded men amazed and rejoicing that they could stifle their consciences at last. And this after all his life's work among these folk. He had given them of his best. His prayers, his intellect, much of his money had been theirs.
The elder man knew that fraud had been at work, but he suspected no such modern and insolent attempt as Basil indicated. It was too much to believe. But his interest had soon become quickened and alive as the private reports from London reached him.
When he knew that great people were moving quietly, that the weight of Sir Michael was behind Basil, he knew at once that in all probability the curate's suspicions were right, and his preaching changed to one of assurance of the true faith.
A curious change then came over the his public appearances and utterances. His sermons were full of fire, almost Pauline in their strength. People began to flow and flock into the great empty church at Walktown. Mr. Byars's fame spread.
Then, swiftly had come the beginning of the great financial depression.
It was felt acutely in Manchester.
All the wealthy, comfortable, easy-going folk who grudgingly paid a small pew rent out of their superfluity became alarmed, horribly alarmed. In the fall of Christianity they saw their own fortunes falling. And these self-deceivers were now being swept back upon the tide of this reaction into the arms of the Christian churches they had despised.
The vicar saw all this. He was a keen expert in, and student of, human affairs, and withal a psychologist. He saw his opportunity.
His words lashed and stung these renegades. They were made to see themselves as they were, as the preacher cut away all the ground from under them. They were left face to face with naked shame for believing what Byars said would soon be proven to be a lie, a huge deception.
What puzzled and yet uplifted the congregation at St. Thomas's had been their vicar's extraordinary certainty that the spiritual darkness over the land was shortly to be removed.
It had been commented on, keenly observed, greatly wondered at.
"Mr. Byars speaks," Mr. Pryde, a wealthy solicitor, had said, "as if he had some private information about this Jerusalem discovery. He is so confident that he magnetises one into his own state of mind, and Byars is not a very emotional man either. His conviction is real. It is not hysteria."
And, being a shrewd, silent man, the solicitor formed his own conclusions, but said nothing of them as the church continued full of worshippers.
* * *
When the news from Basil came, the vicar was sitting before the fire in his lighted study. He had been expecting the telegram all day.
His brain had been haunted by the picture of that distinguished figure with the dark red hair he had so often met.
Again he pictured Constantine Schuabe standing in his drawing room, proffering money for scholarships. And later in Dieppe.
How well and clearly he recalled the huge figure of Robert Llwellyn, the scholar in his coat of astrakhan, with his babble of soups and entrée!
Try as he would, the vicar could not hate these two men. The sin, the awful sin, yes, a thousand times. Horror could not be stretched far enough, no hatred could be too great for such an immensity of crime.
But in his great heart, in his large, human nature there was a Divine pity for this wretched pair. He could not help it. It was part of him. He wondered if he were not erring in feeling this pity. Was not this, indeed, that mysterious sin against the Holy Spirit for which there was no forgiveness? Was it not said of Judas that for his deed he would lie for ever in Hell?
The telegram was brought in by a neat, unconcerned housemaid.
Then the vicar got up and locked the inner door of his study. He knelt in prayer and thanksgiving.
This good man, who had given his vigorous life and active intellect to God, knelt humbly at his study table while a joy and happiness not of this earth filled his soul.
At that supreme moment, when the sense of the glorious vindication of Christ flooded the vicar's whole being with ecstasy, he knew, perhaps, a faint foreshadowing of the life the Blessed live in Heaven.
For a few brief moments that imperfect instrument, the human body, was permitted a glimpse, a flash of the eternal joy prepared for the saints of God.
The vicar drew very near the Veil.
Helena knocked at the study door. He opened it to her, the tall, gracious lady.
She saw the news in her father's face.
They embraced with deep and silent emotion.
* * *
Two hours later the vicarage was full of people. The news had arrived.
Special editions of the evening papers were being shouted through the streets. Downing Street had spoken, and in Manchester -- as in almost every great city in England -- the Truth was pulsing and throbbing in the air, spreading from house to house, from heart to heart.
Everyone knew it in Walktown now.
There was a sudden unanimous rush of people to the vicarage.
Each house sent out its eager citizens into the night.
They came to show the pastor, who had not failed them in the darkness, their joy and gratitude now that light had come at last.
How warm and hearty these north country people were. Mr. Byars had never penetrated so deeply beneath the somewhat forbidding crust of manner and surface-hardness before.
Mingled with the sense of shame and misery at their own luke warmness, there was a fine and genuine desire to show the vicar how they honoured him for his steadfastness.
"You've been an example to all of us, vicar," said a hard-faced, brassy-voiced cotton spinner, a kindly light in his eyes, his lips somewhat tremulous.
"We haven't done as we ought to by t'church," said another, "but you'll see that altered, Mr. Byars. Eh, but our faith has been weak! There'll be many a Christian's heart full of shame and sorrow for the past months this night, I'm thinking."
They crowded round him, this knot of parishioners, hard-faced and harsh-spoken, with a warmth and contrition which moved the old man inexpressibly.
Never before had he been so near to them. Dimly he began to think he saw a wise and awful purpose of God, who had allowed this iniquity and calamity, that the faith of the world might be tested and then strengthened.
"We'll never forget what you've done for us, Mr. Byars."
"If we've been lukewarm before, vicar, 'twill be all boiling now!"
"Praise God He has spoken at last, and God forgive us for forgetting Him."
The air was electric with love and praise.
"Will you say a prayer, vicar?" asked one of the churchwardens. "It seems the time for prayer and a word or two like."
The company knelt down.
Here and there a shoulder shook w
ith suppressed emotion, a faint sob was heard. This, to many of them, was the greatest spiritual moment they had ever known. Confirmation, Communion, all the episodic milestones of the professing Christian's life in the parish church had been experienced and passed decorously enough. But the inward fire had not been there. The deep certainty of God's mysterious commune with the soul, the deep love for Christ which glows so purely and steadfastly among the saints still on earth -- these were coming to them now.
As the fires of the Holy Spirit had descended on the Apostles nearly two thousand years before, so now the Holy Spirit began to stir and move these Christians at Walktown.
The vicar offered up the joy and thanks of his people. He prayed that, in His mercy, God would never again let such extreme darkness descend upon the world. Even as God had said, "Neither will I again smite any more every thing living, as I have done."
He prayed that all those who had been cast into spiritual darkness, or who had left the fold of Christ, would now return to it with contrite hearts and be in peace.
Finally, they said the Lord's Prayer with deep feeling, and the vicar blessed them.
For each one there, that night became a precious, helpful memory which remained with them for many years.
Afterwards, while servants brought coffee, always the accompaniment to any sort of function in Walktown, the talk broke out into a hushed amazement.
The news which had been telegraphed everywhere consisted of a statement signed by the Secretary of State and the Archbishops that the discovery in Palestine was a forgery executed by Sir Robert Llwellyn at the instigation of Constantine Schuabe.
"Ample and completely satisfying evidence is in our possession," so the wording ran. "We render heartfelt gratitude to Almighty God that He has in His wisdom caused this outrageous conspiracy to be discovered. The thanks of the whole world, the gratitude of all Christians, must be for those devoted and faithful men who have been the instruments of God in discovering the Truth. Sir Michael Manichoe, the Rev. Basil Gortre, the Rev. Arthur Ripon, and Mr. Harold Spence have alone dispelled the clouds that have hung over the Christian world."
No mention, in the official statement, was made of Gertrude Hunt.
It was a frightful shock to these people to know how a great magnate among them, a business colleague, the Parliamentary member for their own division, a friend, should have done this thing.
It was incredible that this antichrist had been long housed among them, a mile from where they stood.
"What will they do to him?"